


Going

by NuMo



Series: The Road Ahead [2]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: AU, Crossover, Established Relationship, F/F, Post-Canon, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-16
Updated: 2012-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-12 06:52:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NuMo/pseuds/NuMo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Again, this starts out completely different from how it ends. <i>Voyager</i> is destroyed - but is it, really?</p>
<hr/><p>Part Two of the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/23850">"The Road Ahead"</a> Series. This one is set after the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/18811">"Curtains and Masks"</a> Series. I strongly suggest you read that one first; I don't think this story, or series, will work by itself. </p>
<p>I don't own Star Trek nor anything connected with it, but I do own my own characters. I'm not making any profit, although I hope to reap some feedback.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Undercover

“Thank you again, Autarch. You will understand that we need a little time to ourselves right now. I’ll contact you. Janeway out.”

Kathryn is rattled. We all are. Still, even after having been shown the debris field, she clings quite stubbornly to Althea’s claim that she would know if her wife and children had died. Her eyes flicker this way and that, following trains of thoughts, moving, switching, running in circles, too, maybe. Then, they return to the present. And to the aft compartment, holding the bag I’ve brought. 

“Marie, did you bring-”

I get her immediately. “Yes.” I jump up, race aft, and tear through my stuff, returning with my smartphone held aloft. They’ve sat down around the table, and I join them. “There you go.” I reach it over.

She takes it, but doesn’t activate it. Instead, she looks at Althea. Their eyes lock, then the healer nods, at what she sees in Kathryn’s eyes or her mind, and walks to the nearest console. She touches it, closes her eyes, stills. Is that a shudder running through the ship? Althea smiles when she steps away and drops back to her chair. “Clear.” Then she nods towards the phone, a question in her eyes, and Kathryn purses her lips and holds it out to her. A finger even more slender than hers touches it, then a frown crosses the healer’s face. “I don’t… Admiral, would you-?” 

She reaches out a hand towards Kathryn, who takes it instantly. I worry a bit when Kathryn gasps, but both Althea’s and her hand come up in a stopping gesture and I can’t help but smile. Tom looks on, mystified by all of it. Then Althea gives another nod. “Clear, too.”

“Thank you.” Kathryn flicks the mobile open with muscle-memory ease, and my smile deepens to a smirk. Then, just as smoothly, Kathryn activates the three-hundred-year-old voice control program. “Drillerpiffe,” she says, clearly enunciating the foreign syllables. Well. When things come to what we fear they’ve come to, you need to get creative, right? And she worked so hard to get the German r right. Now we only have to wait. Joining the others at the table, I try to imagine the call going out, on this outdated frequency (hard to believe, too, that I still remember how companies bid billions for them), at light-speed to the nearest subspace relay, there to transform itself into an innocent-looking data package, piggyback on this message and that, until it hopefully reaches its destination, is received, transcribed, and sent back. 

To help pass the time, I look up this Tau Ophiuchi relay on a PADD, and try to calculate how long it would take, at light speed, to reach it. Kathryn stares at the table, lips pursed, arms crossed almost protectively across our daughter. Althea is silent, too, hands curled in a curious gesture. It’s Tom who, by now, is pacing and gritting his teeth. 

He has no idea what Drillerpiffe is about, same as Althea – well, at least she can pick it out of Kathryn’s head, or has already done so, but he… he has just gotten the message that his wife and daughter have died a fiery death, has seen proof, has only Kathryn’s stubborn and Althea’s somewhat esoteric assertion that the Arcadians must be wrong, to sustain him. I catch his eyes, trying to convey that it’ll work out alright, however this will work out. But then, my wife and unborn kid sit at my side. He turns away and goes on pacing. 

My thoughts, our thoughts, get disrupted, though, when a very welcome voice answers.

“Admiral! How did-”

“Doctor, where’s _Voyager_?” Kathryn cuts through the Doctor’s question with her own, and he stops talking when he hears her. Good. At least we have undelayed two-way communication. 

“I’m afraid I don’t know, even though I’m on the ship,” _Voyager’s_ doctor replies. “I’ve been forced to hide, and I don’t have access to any computer systems, much less tactical information.”

“Report.” She’s hiding it well, but I can see some of the tension leaving her. If he’s on the ship, it can’t have exploded. Tom is listening intently, too.

“The first officer ordered _Voyager_ out of orbit three days ago, to rendezvous with the _Garuda_ in the Bicco system. Once there, we took Admiral Janeway and Healer Kalliste back on board, both slightly injured and reporting an accident that supposedly destroyed the aeroshuttle and killed Mister Paris.” Baffled looks follow this tale, delivered so coolly. “A medical check-up of both survivors was delayed due to a system-wide power failure. Once power was restored, it took approximately two hours for Healer Kalliste to appear in sickbay, and I had to actively approach the Admiral for her examination. Both check-ups came up picture-perfect, but my equipment didn’t. It responded too sluggishly. A human eye might not have noticed, but my superior perception clearly indicated a two millisecond delay. 

“Suspecting a connection to the ship-wide power failure, I ran a level three diagnostic, with, again, picture-perfect results. If the tricorder and scanner were working without error, I argued, something could be wrong with the examined subjects, so I tried to observe the concerned parties unobtrusively. Healer Kalliste, Admiral Janeway, and the baby appeared to be in good health, if troubled by the purported death of Lieutenant Paris. Well, we all were, of course. Commander Troi’s body language and voice, however, showed more pronounced signs of stress than seemed warranted. Then someone tried to access my code in an attempt to shut me off and make it look like a serious malfunction of my program. As per our Delta Quadrant deliberations, I directed the attempt to the prepared program dummy and entered the undercover ECH mode. 

“I haven’t been able to find out who accessed my code yet. I’ve managed to evade detection by altering my physical appearance to a height of approximately fifteen centimeters, leaving a non-functional replica of my mobile emitter behind and carrying the real McCoy to a place only accessible to… well, rats and hobgoblins, if this ship had any.” He pauses, and my incorrigible brain pictures him, a handspan tall, in a tangle of conduits and blue glowing gel packs, red-shirted chest sticking out with pride, scrawny arms holding his emitter like a shield. Too bad his voice doesn’t lend itself to shouting ‘crivens!’. God, I do hope silliness is a sign of recovery. Althea is trying to hide a smile, scratching her chin, but her eyes dance quite merrily, and I know she’s getting the picture, as it were. She nods to me and winks. Good grief.

“As of now,” the Doctor resumes his report, “I have access to ship’s communications, which I deemed most important for our purposes. I have detected several subroutines that reroute outgoing calls to an unusual frequency, but had no opportunity to look further into that without risking detection. It’s another clue, though, that something’s wrong. If needed, I can move to where I can get to sensor or flight controls, but it would take me a while, and then I’d have to come back here to contact you again.” 

“Good job, Doctor.” Kathryn hasn’t moved a muscle, from what I can see, and yet there’s a change about her. Well, there would be – her next words confirm it. “I gather that the Arcadians’ claim that my ship was destroyed with all hands is false?”

“Of course it is. We’re all present and accounted for, or rather more than that, if I may say so. May I, on the other hand, safely assume that Healer Kalliste is with you, and that Mister Paris is still among the living?”

“I’m here, Doc,” the lieutenant calls out, finally succumbing to his impatience and jumping out of his chair, as if that would bring him closer to his family. “Could you tell my wife and daughter?”

“I’m afraid that won’t be a good idea, Lieutenant,” Kathryn says, her eyes asking for his understanding. “It would give us away too early, much as I regret how it will hurt them not to know. We mustn’t involve any more people than strictly necessary. Doctor,” her voice becomes all business again, “I do want you to indeed access the ship’s sensors. Find out where you are and where you’re going, and stay out of the way of these doppelgangers.” I nearly choke. ‘Doppelgangers’?! I knew about ‘kindergarten’, of course; who doesn’t, but… _Countenance, Vey_. Kathryn is still talking. “How quickly can you do that?”

“I can’t say, Admiral. It might take me as little as three hours, but if I’m detected or otherwise stopped…”

“I understand, Doctor. Do your best. As soon as you know anything, contact us. My guess is that someone has masked or dispersed _Voyager’s_ warp trail, otherwise the Arcadians couldn’t have deceived us about its destruction. We’ll see if we can’t find answers here on Arcadia, and we’ll try to find that warp trail. Anything else, Doctor?”

“Well, if you’d indulge my curiosity – was your mission successful?”

Kathryn suddenly smiles and leans back. “Which one?” 

Althea rolls her eyes, then speaks up. “Doc, we’re onboard _Garuda_ , and that interface worked just as planned, but I guess you’re not asking about that, are you.” Althea throws that infectious smile of hers at me. “Miss Vey sits right across the table. Say hi, Marie.”

“Hi, Marie,” I manage, to groans. “I’m sorry. I’m here, Doctor.”

“It’s good to hear that,” he says with an audible smile, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe. “I look forward to seeing you. All of you, of course. Stealth ECH, out.”

Althea crows at his words, and it takes quite a bit of tension with it, that outburst. The whole conversation does; even Tom sits down. 

“Well, now.” Kathryn inhales deeply. “Well.” She takes my hand and squeezes it, painfully hard, for a moment. Then the admiral raises her head purposefully. “Healer, you’ll accompany me to the planet, I’ll need your telepathic abilities. Mister Paris, get searching. Marie – I want you to look over Tom’s shoulder and learn as much as you can. Lieutenant, whenever you have time and concentration to spare, show her the ropes.”

“Aye, Admiral.” 

I echo Tom, a bit dazzled. 

Kathryn touches my cheek, quick as lightning, and smiles at me just as fleetingly. “I can’t afford to have you sit on your hands, Marie. Thirty-three percent more manpower? I’ll take that anytime. Consider yourself drafted, crewman.”


	2. Forth

Stepping around the building’s corner, Althea slaps her hand against the wall. “Damnit.”

“Easy, Healer.” It _is_ frustrating, though, Kathryn has to admit that. The Autarch – nothing. Admiral ten Helder, CO of the Arcadian division of Starfleet – nothing. Head of the Arcadian police – nothing. “And you haven’t detected any appearance of deceit in her words, either?” Althea shakes her head. Chief Overseer of Orbital Space – nothing. The corners of Kathryn’s mouth drop sharply. As nice as it is to know these people weren’t involved, these conversations have yielded nothing that brings her any closer to _Voyager_.

“Let me try accessing their computers,” Althea says, rounding another corner. “There should be… ah.”

“What?” But the healer’s already out of it – eyes closed, body perfectly still, leaving Kathryn to look around and see if they aren’t watched. Minutes pass. A frown forms on Althea’s face, deepens. A moan. Lips purse. Knees buckle, and Kathryn catches the collapsing limpness. “Healer!”

Lids flutter. “’M alright.” Althea sits up, slightly dazed. “No luck, Admiral.” It’s barely a mumble, soft, washed-out. 

“Janeway to _Garuda_ , two to beam up.”

Once back on the aeroshuttle, the healer looks a little better. “Thanks, Admiral. How did you know that?”

“Know what?”

Althea looks at her, appraisingly, then the corner of her mouth twitches. “Later.” They both stand, and, with a last frown, Kathryn walks over to the ship’s cockpit. Marie glances up and vacates her chair at ops for Kathryn to slip into.

“Lieutenant.”

“Not much luck, Admiral,” Paris sighs. “No warp trail, as predicted. We have collected a few bits of debris, and they do look like they’re from an Intrepid-class ship. Metallurgic composition, residual energy signatures, even traces of bio-neural fibers… Whoever is behind this, they’ve pulled one hell of a stunt. Do you want me to contact Starfleet?”

“Negative, Lieutenant. If my suspicion is true, the standard frequencies will be monitored for just that move, and we’d-” A blast rocks the ship, and it switches to red alert mode instantly, indicating an attack. “Shields! Mister Paris, what was that?”

“I’m not sure,” he answers, fingers dancing over the controls. “Whoever they are, they must be cloaked.”

“Let me,” Althea comes up behind him. “You take tactical, I take helm.”

“What? I’m the best pilot-”

“No you’re not, and I won’t shoot at people. Move it, Lieutenant.”

“But-” 

Another hit shakes them, less pronounced now the shields are up. Kathryn has to stop this squabble. “Do it, Lieutenant.” With a set chin, Paris moves to the port aft station, while the healer drops into his vacated chair and spreads her hands over her half of the console. Kathryn moves her chair farther back and to the right, to give the healer better access. “Damage report.”

“Shields hold at sixty-nine percent, impulse drive down-”

“I’m on it,” the healer interrupts him, “ignore it, Admiral. Half a minute, if that.”

Paris grits his teeth. “-weapons at full power. But I don’t have anything to lock on to, so-” 

Another hit. “Target the source of their fire and give them all we’ve got, Mister Paris!”

“No use, Admiral, they’re moving too quickly! By the time their shots hit us, they’re gone.”

“Impulse engines back online and ready, Admiral,” Kalliste calls out, “accessing sensors to find them.” 

Kathryn finds herself ducking as another streak of phaser fire flashes towards them. This time, though, _Garuda_ shakes itself out of its way, then shoots off in a series of the tightest evasive maneuvers Kathryn has ever seen. “God,” she can hear Marie groan tersely from behind, probably at the engineering console, seeing as that’s been the last free chair.

“Hold on, crewman,” Kathryn calls over her shoulder. “Commander, report.”

“Evasive pattern theta six. Evasive pattern nu three. Evasive pattern unknown. Evasive pattern-” it’s not Althea’s voice that answers. It’s the computer, dryly calling out its status. “Evasive pattern beta nine. Weapon’s lock positive.”

“Fire!” Two photon torpedoes shoot forwards, arch back and up on automatic intercept. _Garuda_ passes them by and Paris fires the aft phaser banks. “Got them!” he yells. “Cloak is down. What the… Admiral, their warp core has a… Starfleet signature? Looks like a Defiant-class – what-”

“Never mind that now, Tom.” After all, it’s not really unexpected. Kathryn’s eyes roam her console’s readouts. “Fire at will to disable their shields. There are seven life signs aboard, and I want whoever they are over here.”

“Aye, Admiral.” 

“Commander, move to intercept, and don’t let them out of the range of our torpedo launchers. Lieutenant, I’ll erect a force field in the aft compartment; beam them over as soon as their shields are down. I want to get some answers.” A two-fold aye, a change of course, a brilliant explosion. “What the hell was that? Tom, I said to disable their shields, not blow them up!”

“Not my fault, Admiral. I got their shields to three percent, the rest was their move.”

“Auto-destruct?”

“Yes, Admiral,” Althea says, shaking herself loose from her console and slumping in her chair.

“Damnit.” Kathryn feels like punching her armrest. “Stand down red alert. Commander, get us back into high orbit. Power down weapons, Mister Paris. Damage report.”

“Powering down, Admiral,” Tom affirms, then accesses the internal sensors and whistles softly. “We’ve come through this in pretty good shape, actually. Impulse engine temperature is eighteen percent over approved maximum, shields are down to fourty-eight percent, ship-wide power to fifty-two, and,” he taps a final command into his console and cocks his head, “we’re down two photon torpedoes.” Then he turns his chair slightly to look at ops, respect in his eyes. “That was the sharpest bit of flying I’ve ever seen, Commander – theta six into nu three? I’ve always thought that would-” Althea, still wilting, weakly waves a hand at him.

Nothing as liberating as a fight survived. Apparently, Tom feels it, too. Still. “You call that ‘pretty good shape’, Lieutenant? Half our shields and power gone?” 

“Well, considering that we went against a cloaked ship four times our size, I do, Admiral.” Oh, the cocky grin. Still, Kathryn’s mouth twitches, too.

Then she turns to the seat on her left. “Healer, are you alright?”

“Getting there.” Althea’s smile appears stronger than the one she gave Tom. Then she looks past Kathryn. “ _You_ aren’t, though, are you?” Marie does look a little worse for wear. “Space-sick?”

“If that feels like motion sickness, yeah. Oh, sh-” she jumps up and runs towards the back. 

Kathryn feels torn between amusement and commiseration (it’s been barely three months that she went that way morning, noon and night, after all), but then she remembers something and hurries after her wife.

* * *

God, I still hate when that happens. This time, though, Kathryn’s arms around me are neither new nor hesitant. This time, I don’t shrink back from them when I realize she’s holding me. This time, the crying, and the shivering goes on for far longer. You’d have thought I was over it, but apparently I’m not. 

“I’m sorry,” I manage, finally. 

“Whatever for?” Her voice is as gentle as her arms around my shoulders.

“Being a wimp?” I try to sit up, grating that it takes her help to do so. “Being no bloody use?”

“Hold it right there, crewman,” she says with a smile. “I know how quickly you pick up things.”

“Shit, Kathryn, the ops console isn’t a PADD. I can’t do this. I…” I can’t. I yearn to burrow into her embrace, but I’m not sure whether for comfort or to escape her eyes.

“Things are only impossible until they’re not, Marie. I know you can do it. And if you can’t see that at the moment, well then,” she tugs at my chin, and her smile is wide, and teasing, and loving, “trust me, for just as long as it takes you to find your feet again.” My own words, or close enough, and she’s throwing them back at me. A quick kiss tells me she means it, too. “I know it works.” A longer one tells me she does. That gift of Althea’s is a terrifying thing. Sharp and dangerous. To feel myself being loved by her… it cuts me until I bleed, and she never drops that blade. 

You’d have thought I was over the crying.

Walking back from the head to the sleeping compartment, Kathryn’s arm around my waist, I feel just about as tottering as Althea looked when I ran out on them. The port cabin’s lights are subdued when we reach it, and Kathryn helps me sit down on the lower bunk. I drop my head to my hands. “This is exactly what I mean, Kathryn.”

“Oh, I know what you mean, alright.” Her hand never leaves my waist. “But Rome wasn’t built in one day, Marie, and the Academy takes four years to turn out ensigns. Sleep for a while, now, and when you’re back on your feet, we’ll make a space cadet out of you yet.”

“But you don’t even need me!”

She stares at me. “You’re not serious.”

“Well, the only thing I was good for right now in that fight was to run and puke when it was over. Of course I’m serious.”

“And if one of the three of us had been knocked out, we would have lost, and that’s why I want you to learn about starship operations. You already know some of the procedures. I know you read up on them back then. Now you’ll learn to implement them, and we’ll use whatever time we have to teach you the basics. Althea, Tom and I can pilot the ship, and Tom can back up Althea as medic and me as CO. And he’s passing good at tactical and ops, and in a crunch I can pull my weight there, too, but,” she smiles, with terse lines around her mouth telling of her ongoing anxiousness, “in a crunch, chances are I’m needed elsewhere, so I want you to be able to function there.”

She means it. God, she really means it. The realization slowly spreads through me, warm, hot, icy cold. “I…”

“Sleep, Marie.” Her hand on my cheek is cool, and familiar, and reassurance. “It’ll be alright.”

* * *

“Lieutenant Commander, Lieutenant.” Kathryn motions them towards the table. “I want to talk about a few things.”

“And I want to hear a few things,” Tom quips, and wins a small smile for it. “Is Marie alright?”

“Sleeping,” Kathryn answers, keeping quiet about the minute she’s spent sitting next to the bunk to make sure of it.

“Are _you_ alright?” 

“I’m fine, and Baby Janeway is, too.” Tom grins at the designation he came up with, and insists on using as often as he can get away with. “In fact, I think she likes space fights. She’s bouncing as if she wanted us to continue.” Kathryn keeps quiet about her own detour to the head, too – it wasn’t for reasons of nausea, after all, and they probably heard, anyway. And her legs are killing her, but she won’t make that public, either. Well. She doesn’t have to. Althea looks at her searchingly for a moment, then gets up, replicates something, returns to the table with a bowl of stew, a slice of bread, and a glass of water, and pulls out a chair, patting its seat.

“Feet up, Admiral.”

“Doctor’s orders?”

“If you want them to be.” Althea’s smile is deeply, deeply teasing, and Kathryn finds herself complying before the healer can pull one of her stunts.

Then she starts digging into her soup, amazed at how hungry she is. “Healer, you know what all this is about, right?”

“If you want to know whether I read it in your mind and can give Tom an overview while you eat-” good grief, how did this woman ever get a commission? “-absolutely, Admiral.”

“Proceed, then, please.” Sink spoon in, scoop spoon out, remember to blow. _Slow down, Janeway, for heavens’ sake._

“I’d ask you to correct me if I get something wrong, though.” Kathryn nods, chewing on a bite of bread and waving her spoon in affirmation. “Well, Lieutenant, here goes. When _Voyager_ was back in the Delta Quadrant, Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay realized that they needed a few contingency plans for dealing with what was waiting in the Alpha Quadrant. Admirals, trials, the press, things like that,” Althea elaborates at Tom’s empty look.

His eyebrows rise. “You did?” Kathryn just looks at him, spoon hovering. “Of course you did.”

“Among other things, they found a press liaison in the Alpha Quadrant – yes, Jake Sisko,” Althea nods, quite probably at Tom’s thought.

“I’ve always wondered how that had come about, you know.”

“Your father found him, actually,” Kathryn tells him, after swallowing. “He knew Jake’s father, and recommended we approach the young man.”

“And Jake told the command team, again among other things, about an organization that operates covertly within Starfleet,” Althea goes on, only to be interrupted again.

“Oh come on, don’t tell me this is about this Section 31 nonsense.”

“Well, we have been almost blown to bits by a cloaked ship with a Starfleet warp signature, right?” Althea’s voice is just this side of snide and Tom, predictably, bristles.

“You’re asking me to believe-”

“I’m _telling_ you, Lieutenant, that Jake’s arguments convinced the commanding officer of your ship to take steps.”

“It’s true, Tom,” Kathryn cuts in, trying to defuse her helmsman. “We didn’t necessarily believe those rumors, either. I didn’t want to believe them, to tell the truth, but there were quite a few things at stake.” She waves at Althea to proceed, spooning up the rest of her stew. _Second helping? Might as well._

“The Doctor and his emitter,” Althea continues, grinning at Kathryn’s nonchalant attempt to get up without seeming insatiable or desperate. “Seven of Nine and Icheb, Borg technology, twenty-fifth century technology. Wouldn’t you just love to get your hands on them, and not have any regulations in your way?”

“I see,” Tom grudgingly concedes. “So you came up with plans against that.”

“We did,” Kathryn nods, turning from the replicator, bowl in hand. “Anyone else?” Receiving two shakes, she returns to the table. “Of course we saw it as just another hypothetical scenario to take countermeasures against. Seven, Marie and Ellen helped a lot, actually, because they had an outsider’s view of things. They made us see just how many things were regulated, supervised, controlled by Starfleet, and helped us come up with plans that were safe from prying eyes.”

“Like using this… antique communication device and its frequency to contact the Doctor.”

“Exactly,” Althea picks up because Kathryn’s mouth is full again. “Or re-programming _Voyager’s_ Doctor’s subroutines and safety protocols to make him more autonomous, and safer from outside tampering-”

“-up to and including a dummy to reroute remote access to.” Tom’s voice says clearly that he’s catching on.

“Necessary,” Kathryn replies after swallowing another spoonful. “We couldn’t secure all of the ship’s systems without rendering it useless, but we _could_ take steps with the personnel at hand. So we came up with Protocol Drillerpiffe.” She gives him a grin, eyes glinting at how amazed he looks. “Which means ‘whistle’ where Marie comes from, and is not only German, but an obscure dialect of same. Oh, we were feeling quite cloak-and-dagger, Mister Paris. The Doctor especially so. The use of the word was supposed to alert everyone on our little war council to what the person uttering it was suspecting. The use of it over a communication device, preferably non-Starfleet, would scramble and encrypt the resulting conversation so heavily that not even a Cardassian would recognize it as communication anymore.” 

The memory evokes a proud smile. “Seven did most of that. She also programmed Marie’s phone, and put in a subroutine that would alert her when it was activated.” Realization makes her grow cold. “I just hope she doesn’t contact _Voyager_ and alerts my doppelganger. Next time he calls, I’ll tell the Doctor to look out for incoming transmissions of her. I shouldn’t wonder if he isn’t watching them already in any case. His ECH subroutines can be quite… convenient.” She soaks up the dregs of her soup with the last bit of bread.

Tom whistles again. “Admiral, this is a hell of a plan to come up with on a rumor.” Then he shakes his head, “quite obviously necessary, though. Kahless’ bloody bat’leth.”

“All our planning still hasn’t done me too much good, though,” Kathryn says wryly. “My ship’s been kidnapped, and I’ve been replaced, however they’ve done that.”

“If they’re operating with cloaks, maybe they don’t shy from using other illegal technology. Cloning, or something.”

“Possible,” Althea cuts in, “but not probable. A clone ages just as slowly as a real person does, after all.” Her mouth curves in a tight grin. “Unless you’re me, of course.”

“Which is something I dearly want to know more about, Healer,” Kathryn points with her spoon, before sweeping the bread crumbs into her empty bowl and returning it to the replicator. “Coffee, anyone?”

“No thanks, but I’ll get the inhibitor,” Tom offers.

“Good man,” Kathryn smiles at his receding back. “I want you to wait, though, Healer, until Marie’s awake again. She’s part of this rescue mission, and I want all of us to know everything that concerns it. And I daresay your talents define as such.”

“Very well, Admiral.”

“She did well with the scanners,” Tom adds, slipping back into his seat and offering Kathryn the hypo. “As well as can be expected of someone who isn’t familiar with LCARS, anyway.” 

“That’s good to hear, Tom, thanks.” Apply hypo, wait for five seconds, take a sip of blessed ambrosia. “I want you to continue teaching her as much as your other duties allow; I’ll do the same. Basic field medic training, too – she needs to know her way around a medkit, at least.”

Tom nods. “Sensible. I’ll see to it.”

“Make ops training your first priority, though. Tactical second, medkit third.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“And while we’re at it – if anything happens to me, I want you, Tom, to take command. I know you technically outrank him, Healer, but you don’t have bridge nor command credentials.”

“Very well.” Thank goodness that Kalliste takes this so calmly.

“Good. Tom, when it comes to another battle or tight spot of flying, Kalliste will relieve you at helm again, and you’ll take tactical. I need you there, I need the edge Kalliste’s abilities give her at helm, and I don’t want another quarrel like the one an hour ago, understood?” She looks at both of them in turn, until they both tell her so. “And,” and now she looks rather more sharply at Althea, “I want you to clear your ideas with me before you implement them. Accessing the Arcadian computer did confirm that they were telling the truth about not knowing what happened, but it left you weak. And while, in hindsight, your taking helm was a good move, I don’t take kindly to one of my officers facing down another while we’re under attack, do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Admiral. It won’t happen again.”

“Thank you. Now, let’s get _Garuda_ ship-shape again. I’ll take a look at the impulse engines; Tom, contact Admiral ten Helder’s office to get replacement torpedoes, try and see whether you can’t get more than the two, if you find the space. Healer, are you up to accessing the sensors?”

“You want me to look for _Voyager’s_ trail?”

“Exactly. I know,” Kathryn holds up her hand to stop Tom’s objection, “I _know_ our sensors haven’t found anything, Lieutenant, and I know you’ve teased out every last jot of information from them. But sensors look only for the things they’re programmed to look for, and maybe that’s exactly what’s keeping us from finding anything.”

“In fact, Lieutenant,” Althea adds, looking at him almost diffidently, “I could use your help with that when you’re through with Admiral ten Helder. I wouldn’t know _Voyager’s_ warp signature if it bit me. I’d appreciate if you told me what to look for.”

“Will do, Commander.” 

“Thank you.” 

Tom waits for his CO’s nod, then leaves for the cockpit. Kathryn closes her eyes briefly, to thank any listening deity that her two senior officers seem able to work with each other, then winces when Baby Janeway – _we have to come up with a real name before this one sticks too much_ – presses a foot against her bladder. _Good grief, I went only fifteen minutes ago, I can’t believe-_

“Elbow,” Althea informs her quietly, “and she’s excited.”

Kathryn’s eyebrows rise of their own volition. “Oh?”

“Yes. Your adrenaline rush is getting through to her.”

“Well, it’s just about finished its rush through me.”

“Now you know where it’s gone,” the healer grins. 

“Can you really tell when she’s excited?” The idea intrigues Kathryn.

“Oh yes,” Althea confirms. “And I never stop being fascinated about what’s happening at this stage. When Marie and you have a moment, I can show you. I think you’ll like that.”

“Show us? Like you showed us the conception?” Althea nods, eyes twinkling. “Good _God_ , yes.” The words come out in a rush of breath.

The smile on Althea’s face deepens. “When Andrea and Yann were six months old, I was barely able to work, you know. Andrea… she was a marvel. A miracle. Deanna had to remind me to eat and sleep, I was so taken up with just watching our daughter develop. And Yann was so different from his sister that I just had to watch all over again.”

“It must be fascinating to be able to do that.” Marveling, with a hint of envy.

Althea notices. Of course she does. “As long as it doesn’t keep you from doing your job. I lost count of how many times Doctor Crusher scolded me for losing focus. Oh, never when there was a patient in my care, of course not,” she replies to Kathryn’s unvoiced thought, “but there were quiet times, too, and I’m not particularly known for my patience with cataloguing and inventorying and the like.”

“Heavens, yes,” Kathryn agrees, “I was so glad when I finally made lieutenant and could order lowly ensigns to do that for me.” They share a conspiratorial grin, then Althea helps Kathryn up. A pain disappears from Kathryn’s lower back at her touch; a pain that, up to now, she had determinedly and futilely tried to ignore. “You know, you’re handy to have around, Healer. Thank you for that.”

“Anytime, Kathryn. Just let me know when something gives you troubles. No one awards you any points for nobly standing pain, after all.” She delivers it so drolly that Kathryn’s still chuckling when she reaches the engineering console.


	3. Beyond

“ECH to _Garuda_ ,” the call comes in while Tom teaches me how to read the sensor readouts I’ve learned to call up.

“Janeway here,” a familiar voice rings out eagerly from the engineering console to my right. “Good to hear from you, Doctor – what have you got for us?”

“Coordinates and heading. Transmitting them right now, in fact.” His voice is predictably smug.

“Got them,” Althea confirms from helm, on my left. It’s elegant, this long swing of consoles; helm and ops stretching across the front of _Garuda’s_ cockpit wall to wall, their curve merging into the science and engineering stations on the starboard side of the cockpit. Tactical is on the port side, set back a bit, roughly opposite the engineering station, and behind both of them, three steps lead up to the lounge, one set on each side framing a rail that separates the upper from the lower part of the cabin. The lounge holds, flush against that railing, a table with seating for four, the MSD on the port wall, a replicator on starboard, and a transporter pad at the back, quite off center. If you pass that by on the left, you reach the head, and on its right hand side are the two sets of bunks. Tom tells me there used to be another large open area behind that, but it’s been sacrificed for stronger engines and more storage, and a good thing, too.

There’s a predatory gleam in Kathryn’s eyes as she leans forwards, reaching out as if her fingers were twitching to touch her ship even now. “Set a course. How long will it take us at maximum warp?”

Althea finishes tapping in commands with a flourish. “Fifty-one hours to the coordinates, Admiral; we’ll have to see if we can pick up _Voyager’s_ warp trail along the way, otherwise we’ll need new ones.”

“Engage. Doctor, you heard the commander.” 

“Yes, Admiral. I’ll keep you apprised of our course or destination as much as I can, of course.”

“Excellent. Anything else you can tell us?” 

“Yes, in fact.” Oh, I can just about _see_ him cock his head back. “I’ve extrapolated that your doppelgangers are using a combination of holographic technology and sensor overrides to mask their appearance. It explains the reaction of my medical tricorder, at least.”

“Explain.” She frowns, her eyes very grave.

“It seems that they’ve managed to replicate and adapt the technology of my mobile emitter to change their physical appearance,” the Doctor’s voice states very matter-of-factly. “On top of that, the assumed device apparently reacts to being scanned with feeding false data to the scanning device – transporter patterns, medical data, you name it. It’s only a theory at this point, but it fits the facts, and if it’s true, it’s quite impressive, actually. And of course it would also explain why they replaced Healer Kalliste as well as you, Admiral.”

“I would have known instantly,” Althea nods slowly, while I desperately try to follow all this.

“Exactly,” the Doctor goes on. “I think your impostor is coercing Commander Troi; she seems to be her own self, so to speak, if quite under stress, as I reported yesterday. Being supposedly decompiled, myself, I can hardly walk in on her for a scan.”

“Are my kids alright, Doc?”

“Everyone seems to be in good health, Healer. Internal sensors tell me that much, at least. As to people’s emotional well-being, I can only guess.”

“Understood, Doctor,” Kathryn answers. “Your new assignment is to find out as much as you can about these impostors. Their goals and motivation, any weaknesses, any way to expose them; their real identities if you can.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

“Don’t act on your findings without contacting me, though, and be careful, Doctor. You’re our only link to _Voyager_ , and I don’t want to lose you.”

“Understood. Thank you, Admiral.”

“Janeway out.” Kathryn rises, one hand on her hip, the other tapping her lips. “Fifty-one hours, Lieutenant Commander?”

“I could go to warp 8.5 instead of .4, but that would burn out our engines over this distance, and from what the Doctor said, I don’t think _Voyager_ will be at those coordinates once we get there.”

A heartfelt sigh. “Two days. Well, none of us can help it, can we. Continue scanning for _Voyager’s_ warp signature or any other trail, Commander; we can’t count on the Doctor providing new data. They must have come along this way, and they must have left some trace. Find it.” Then she turns to where I sit, Tom standing behind my shoulder. “Tom, contact Admiral ten Helder and the Autarch and tell them we’re leaving. Crewman – that’s two days to learn; make the best of them.”

“Yes, Admiral.” Her smile at my answer is wry, but appreciative. Truth be told, I appreciate what she’s doing, too, even if it’s tough going at times – but learning something new, something valuable, _is_ a good way out of depression. A rational part of me knows that. A rather more emotional part feels like curling up in a corner somewhere and covering my eyes with my hands until everything is over.

Kathryn had squeezed herself into my bunk last night, but I don’t think we’ll get away with that too often. I’d felt her arms coming around me, the bulge that is our daughter pressing into my back, her breath teasing my neck, and held on to her hands as tightly as I could, trying not to cry. “Wobbly,” I’d whispered, and she’d kissed my ear. 

“Patience,” she’d replied, and chuckling about it had made not crying a little easier.

“Healer,” she calls out now, “do you have the time to fill us in, now?”

“By all means,” Althea replies, turning her chair around to face us. “Have a seat, Tom, this’ll take a while.” He grins at her and complies.


	4. Interlude – Althea’s story

“I wasn’t born, as you use the term. This body came into existence when the _Enterprise_ and her crew visited the planet I was stuck on, and beamed back aboard after their stay. I had managed to make a mental contact with Deanna shortly before that, and understood the principle immediately. Matter-energy conversion; I was wildly excited, and tried to copy the process to give myself a body.”

“So you’re actually a non-corporeal being?” Kathryn interjects, eyes narrowing.

“Yes. I am kin to a race the Federation encountered in the twenty-third century, but they were far more powerful than I ever was, with or without a body. One of them brought me to that planet, but despaired of her loneliness and allowed herself to die, effectively stranding me,” and yet there’s no accusation in Althea’s eyes, only ancient, tender sadness. “I had to use the _Enterprise’s_ transporter’s energy to clad myself in flesh, as it were – the Olympians used to do that with their own energy supply. I learned to live within the confines of a human body with the crew’s help. We also tested and developed my strengths, and the limits of them in my new form. And I guess that’s what you want to know about, right?”

Kathryn nods. Her eyes are alternately dubious and fascinated – I guess all of us feel that way. “Anything that gives us an advantage in this hunt, Healer.”

“I guess I can oblige you there. I am, as you know, both telepathic and empathic, although my range is limited. Both work best when I touch people directly; the farther away from them I am, the less I receive. I can tell if someone is present in a radius of about half a kilometer, can tell you how many persons within about two hundred and eighty meters, their species, if I’ve encountered them before, at one-fifty. Strong thoughts or emotions at about seventy meters, and softer ones quite accurately at fifty. With people I know, at eighty-eight to a hundred, depending. With my wife and children, all across the universe.” Althea suddenly grins. “Well, maybe that’s a tad exaggerated, but I simply know they’re there, even if I can’t contact them.” 

Then her face turns somber again. “The range of my active telepathy depends very much on the receiving person’s compliance. I could reach someone who listened, as it were, right across the _Enterprise_. Someone who wanted to block me, however, and was experienced at that sort of thing, could do so from one biobed over. No-one could block me when I touched them, though we didn’t delve too far into that.” She looks slightly discomfited, and I frown, until I realize how close to a rape that would be.

“Of course you didn’t.” Kathryn seems aware of it, too, but then, she’d know more about telepathic taboos than I would. “Sounds like a lot of research.”

Althea flashes Kathryn a grin. “Indeed. Bev- Doctor Crusher and her staff poked and prodded me for _weeks_.”

“And you can access computer systems, too?” Tom asks, leaning forwards.

Althea’s grin is positively feral. “Non-corporeal, right? There’s still a bit of that in me. I can access energy in a lot of forms. Finding myself on _Voyager_ with her bio-neural circuitry was…” she shudders gleefully, “delightful. So like a brain. The _Enterprise’s_ computer was practically sluggish compared to that, at least the D’s was. So yes, I can access computers, and process and change what I find, too; software, that is. How well, or to what extent, again depends on familiarity with what I’m doing. Not in terms of range, though – I can go wherever the energy I’m accessing goes, of course. I only need an interface. Touching a conductive surface works, so these consoles do fine, but I do have to touch a thing to interact with it. That’s what I did to _Garuda_ and the smartphone, too, in fact; accessed them to see whether something was there that shouldn’t be. Subroutines, spying equipment - good thinking on that one, Admiral.”

“Thanks.” Kathryn’s voice is dry. Then she suddenly narrows her eyes – hit by an inspiration, probably. “That’s how your healing abilities work, too, right? You touch a body, access it at molecular or atomic level-”

“-see what’s wrong, and change it. Exactly, Admiral. It’s what I used to do for _eons_ , before the _Enterprise_ crew found me. I guess that’s why I’m so good at it. Took me longer to learn to follow their rules, procedures, regulations; medicinal or protocol-wise.” She smirks. “A lot longer. Still, they put up with me. I guess saving the ship a few times helped.”

Kathryn is already somewhere else, by the look on her face. “And doing what you do depletes your own energy, doesn’t it?”

Althea turns serious instantly. “I learned that the hard way, yes. I can transform some kinds of energy to help me-”

Fingers, snapping, interrupt her. “Transporter energy being one of them?” I shouldn’t wonder if Kathryn is already thinking of some probing and prodding of her own, she looks so fascinated.

Althea seems to get some of that, herself. She grimaces. “Indeed. Sunshine, too, for some reason. But really, treating my body like a proper human being works best.” Her grimace turns to a smirk. “Which is a good thing, because taste is a marvelous sense. I blacked out the first I ate something, and I’ve never looked back since then. I hate how limited my other senses are, compared to being non-corporeal, but _taste_ …” she smiles beatifically, “makes it all worthwhile.”

“Remind me to invite you to more of our diplomatic functions,” Kathryn replies dryly.


	5. Into the Fire

“I’m picking up Starfleet energy signatures, Admiral.” Marie’s voice is clear and unhesitant. Kathryn frowns at her choice of words, though – must be deliberate, Marie always pays so careful attention to what she says. Still. 

“ _Voyager?_ ”

“No confirmation on that, sorry. Only energy signatures within Starfleet’s usual range of specs. Others, too, that I don’t recognize, I’m afraid.” Brows knit in an intense frown of her own, Marie taps the correct buttons to display further information. Kathryn suppresses a smile. That look is too… _stop it, Janeway. Keep it professional._ “Got it. Readings indicate distinctly Klingon, Tellarite, Bajoran and Tiburonian patterns, plus several others that are commonly used by several species.”

“Sounds like a lot of ships.”

“If so, very small ones, or components.”

“Maybe a salvage yard,” Tom cuts in, his eyes on his own console; helm, while Althea is taking a turn at sleeping. Sensory readings can be rerouted to all stations, after all, and even though Marie is getting good at handling them, she needs back-up; she knows too little, still. “I don’t recall there being a space dock or station around here,” Tom goes on, shrugging, “but salvage yards spring up every once in a while.”

“Do we have anything to put on screen, Crewman?”

“Only the readouts, no visuals yet, Admiral. Should have those in…” Marie checks another part of her console and calculates, “three minutes, five seconds.”

“Put it on as soon as you have it, Crewman.”

“Aye, Admiral.” Marie’s little smile threatens Kathryn’s professionalism again. Oh, two days are certainly not enough to come out of a depressive episode, but Marie seems to be finding her feet again. _Less wobbly all the time?_ , Kathryn had asked her this morning, the third one on the ship, and had received a determined smile in answer. Not a bright one, nor a confident one, oh no. Quite a bit of wobbliness still to overcome, apparently. But Marie is getting there. They both are, really. Kathryn has no idea what she would have done, _could_ have done to help if she didn’t have this task to take Marie’s mind off things, but, as things stand, she’s glad she doesn’t have to worry about it; there are enough other things to worry about after all. 

To wit, chasing after her kidnapped ship in an – admittedly upgraded and customized – runabout, unborn child beneath her heart, shaken wife occupying same, with only Starfleet’s cheekiest pilot and strangest doctor along to help… Well. If, a year ago, anyone had suggested this to Captain Kathryn Janeway, she’d have them sent to sickbay to get their head checked. A year ago… _wait a minute_. Kathryn checks something on her own console. February 28th. A year ago, Kathryn had given Marie a tour of _Voyager_. A year ago, Marie, together with her best friend, had played her very own version of Twenty Question with _Voyager’s_ crew. A year. _Good God._

And now they’re married for a hair’s breadth more than sixth months, and pregnant for just as long, minus four days. Our daughter is exactly six months old today, Kathryn suddenly realizes, remembering how Healer Kalliste had counted the age of her own children from the moment of conception, not the day of birth. Having witnessed that breathtaking moment, Kathryn can’t help but agree. Her hand feels warm on her stomach, right through the uniform. The familiarity of that sensation suddenly registers on Kathryn’s mind, and she shakes her head at herself. 

Marie can’t hide a smile of her own at the gesture, either, and, as usual, immediately grits her teeth. Kathryn certainly commiserates, knowing full well how threatening feeling happy seems when you’re shaken. _Patience, Marie_ , she thinks at her wife, taking heart in how Marie’s shoulders seem to square with the same thought. Determined, her wife is. Stubborn, too, and putting it to good use. 

The largest screen in front of her flickers with a sensor image, and from Tom’s sound of surprise, so does his. “Thanks, Crewman.” Not Marie. Never Marie on duty. Tom is Lieutenant, or Mister Paris, and at times even Tom, but Marie… has to be Crewman. 

“More of a ship’s cemetery than a salvage yard,” Tom mutters, commenting on what they all see. “Must be well over a hundred of them. Though why anyone would leave such a mixture of ships to float like this…”

“‘Pet Sematary?’” Marie asks him, eyebrow raised. 

He grins. “Don’t try to spook me, Marie, you won’t succeed. This explains the dimness of the signatures, at any rate. They’ve powered down anything but antimatter containment and thrusters; I guess whoever put all these ships here programmed them to keep a certain distance so that they won’t collide.”

“Zombie ships?”

“Honestly, Crewman.” Kathryn’s voice is dry. Still, part of her rejoices at that bit of good humor. “Keep scanning and report all changes. Tom, plot a detour; I don’t want to get any closer to them than necessary. Whoever left them here might have put up a protection against intruders. Healer Kalliste, please report to the bridge.” 

“On my way,” the response comes, if not instantly, then at least alertly. 

“Are there any ships around? Active ones, that is?”

“Reporting for duty, Admiral.”

Kathryn casts the healer an appraising smile. “That was quick, Commander. Go on, Crewman.”

“Hard to say, really,” Tom replies when Marie shrugs helplessly. “We can’t discount the possibility that a small craft’s energy readout might just blend in with the readings we’ve taken so far.” Then, towards his pupil, “look for scanner beams, impulse signatures, activity on comm. channels, energy surges, that kind of stuff usually gives live ships away.” 

“Thanks, Lieutenant.” Her fingers move over the console, not dancing as Tom’s do, but no longer quite so hesitant, either. “None detectable, Admiral.”

“Commander, access the sensors and see if you can get anything more than we have, so far. Is there any way to tell if _Voyager_ is in there somewhere?”

“Not from these readings, I’m sorry,” Marie says, frustrated frown firmly in place.

“I don’t see anything either, Admiral.” Then Althea frowns. “Wait a minute. Marie, may I have your device again?”

Marie casts a glance at Kathryn, who nods with a shrug, and retrieves the smartphone from her cabin. 

“Thanks. What was that word you used to activate it?”

Marie smiles a little. “Hold on.” She taps in the appropriate commands, then activates the comm. sequence with the keyword. 

“Admiral!” The reply comes instantly. “You have to turn around, _now!”_

“He’s in there, somewhere, Admiral. On one of these ships,” Althea calls out.

“Lock on to his emitter and beam him aboard, Lieutenant.”

“I said-”

“Got a lock.”

“Energize.”

“Adm-” but the Doctor’s shout is cut short when the closest ship blows up, knocking _Garuda_ around wildly, and setting off a chain reaction of events happening all at once. Tom activates the transporter, Althea slumps forward in her chair, the _Garuda_ jumps to warp. And behind them, matter and antimatter of over a hundred drifting ships collide in a completely uncontrolled way. 

Kathryn turns to her console, eyes wide, but the shields are already up. Still, the shockwaves of the explosions rock them for a few minutes. 

“Do we have him, Tom?”

“Admiral, it’s good to see you in person again.” A beat. “Even though you should listen to your doctor from time to time.” The Doctor steps from the transporter pad, tricorder and scanner already out and running over Althea’s unconscious body.

“Oh?” Kathryn raises an eyebrow, shaking her head to get a strand of hair out of her face. “How so?”

“That junkyard was a trap, obviously, with me as – apparently irresistible – bait. I haven’t got the slightest clue how we escaped from it with everything intact and everybody-” he pats Kalliste’s left cheek until a moan indicates the healer’s coming around, “-safe and sound.”

“Actually, Doctor,” apparently, Kalliste has heard his words, or gathered his intents otherwise, “you’d be neither intact nor safe if it hadn’t been for me.” With what can’t be a vicious smile because it’s too syrupy, she pats his cheek in return.

“Desist, the both of you. Lieutenant, scan our surroundings for readings consistent to the Briar Patch, or a nastiness-inducing cousin of it.” Seeing Tom’s raised eyebrows, Kathryn shakes her head. “Never mind. What’s our heading?”

He checks his console, “same as before; still going off the edge of the map.”

“Sorry to interrupt… err…” Marie sounds hesitant. “I mean, we did just survive the Incredible Demise of the Zombie Shipyard and all that, but… Should we be this flippant?”

Kathryn frowns, rerunning the last few minutes in her mind. “I see your point. Doctor, what’s happening?”

“Hmmm…” He runs his scanner across Althea, himself, thin air. “I’m reading an two point four percent increase of nitrous oxide; getting higher around me for some rea- oh.”

“Computer, adjust atmospheric controls and tell me why you didn’t give us a warning.” 

“The increase had not yet reached critical levels.” 

“Actually, Admiral, I think it’s my fault,” the Doctor says, sounding a bit too chipper for the assertion. “Nitrous oxide was a considerable component of the atmosphere on the ship you beamed me off of. I guess the transporters brought a few ounces over with me. Naturally it would have clung to me, as I made my way to the cockpit, instead of dispersing uniformly into this vessel’s atmosphere.”

“Well, that explains _our_ behavior,” Althea gnarls, “but not yours. You’re a hologram. You don’t get all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on laughing gas.”

“Thanks for noticing, Healer. I do get ‘bright-eyed and bushy-tailed’, though, at surviving the Incredible Demise of the Zombie Shipyard.” He bows to Marie. 

Kathryn suppresses a groan. “How long until this wears off?”

“Oh, I can unruffle my fur anytime you ask, Admiral. As for the four of you, well, considering your current rate of metabolism, about five to ten minutes more, maximum.”

“Let’s get back to business, then. While we’re flying off the map, apparently, we still don’t know where _Voyager_ is, or where they’re headed, right?”

“I am picking up a faint signal.” By now, Kathryn knows that frown on the healer’s face. She holds up a hand to stop Althea from plunging into the ship’s sensors. 

“Doctor, how much of a lead does _Voyager_ have on us?”

“About twenty hours, I’d say, if they’ve kept to their last known speed.”

“Damn. Anything on standard sensors, Crewman?”

“No, Admiral. Lieutenant, could you please verify that?”

“She’s right, Admiral,” Tom nods.

“Alright, Commander, try your luck, but take care of yourself, will you.”

“Crewman?” Kathryn can hear the Doctor asking Marie, under his breath, while the healer accesses the sensors. 

“Drafted, training at ops, tactical, and field medic.” 

“Field medic! Well, I can certainly-”

“Doctor.” Kathryn can’t keep her mouth from quirking. “This is a matter of prioritizing. Marie knows her way around a medkit by now, but what with the company I’m keeping, I figure I need her more urgently at ops. Don’t mess with her curriculum, or I’ll have you brigged.” She shakes her head to get rid of the fog. “God. Sorry about that, Doctor. Still-”

“I understand perfectly, Admiral. Crewman, if you should find time at your disposal, I certainly stand ready for any questions you might have, though.”

“Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it.” Marie drops her voice to a stage whisper, “And I think I would look better in blue, anyway. Or red, for that matter. Whoever chose this color, anyway?” She tugs at her uniform shoulder in distaste. “At least these have pockets.” _God, yes._ The one redeeming feature of the new uniform style, too, in Kathryn’s opinion. 

“Might I also suggest you let me fix your eyes while we wait for things to happen?”

“Good idea, Doctor,” Kathryn calls over her shoulder, “do it.” 

Then, “I have something,” Althea calls out, catching Kathryn’s attention. “Tom, can you verify that?”

“It’s faint, but it’s a warp trail.”

“Adjust our heading, Lieutenant, maximum warp.” To hell with recklessness. Maybe they can shave off a bit of _Voyager’s_ lead. 

“Aye, Admiral.”


	6. Boldly

“Everyone to the bridge,” the call comes next morning, or whatever. During Kathryn’s and my sleep, at any rate, and I can’t begin to express how grateful I am that Tom and Althea have, by unspoken agreement, sent Kathryn and me to bed at the same time, even if we can’t sleep in the same bed. Those are one-man bunks, after all, not two-women-and-an-unborn-baby bunks. Still, I fell asleep to the sound of warp engines and Kathryn’s voice, telling me about Andorian ice caves, and I slept better than I have in months, too. My hand searches for my glasses for a moment, before I remember I don’t need them any longer. Strange. I’ll miss them. But I can always wear-

“There seems to be some form of… shield out there,” Althea, at science station, reports when Kathryn moves up next to her.

“Put it on visual,” Kathryn tells her, then looks back at me and nods when I jerk my thumb questioningly towards the replicator. Before I’m fully turned away, the screens change. I frown, at the thing’s sheer size, then go get breakfast. Both Tom and Althea catch my eye and nod, too, so I return with a tray, and as much panache as four bowls of porridge warrant. Putting my own bowl on the steps, I return to the replicator one more time, retrieve two more crucial items, and sit down on the steps. No other space left, really, seeing as the Doctor occupies the tactical station – I’m not sitting down in a chair while Kathryn isn’t; she’s already rubbing her back.

Tom whistles softly, eyes still fixed on the screen in front of him. “I’d like to see the emitter behind that one,” he says, under his breath.

“Twenty-eight thousand kilometers diameter,” Althea continues her report, “energy signature unknown. There seem to be several ships behind it, but I can’t say how many.”

“Have they seen us?” Kathryn’s voice is terse, and she hasn’t eaten a single bite of her breakfast yet. I’m almost finished – not much to do for me but listen and learn, is there?

“I dropped out of warp as soon as it appeared on our sensors,” Tom replies, “I don’t think they have. The shield’s perimeter is now one point three million kilometers away, and-” he freezes, then hisses, “Damn! Should have known – paranoid. Paranoid! Full stop!” Our engines whine and die. “Proximity sensors. A whole network of them.” I step over to his console when he gestures me forward. “There, you see? Almost black. But for this little echo here, I wouldn’t have noticed and we’d have lit them up like so many Christmas trees.”

“Can we get past undetected?” Kathryn asks immediately, her eyes switching from Althea’s readouts to his. “They seem wide enough apart to make a grey mode run past them.”

“They certainly are, but we don’t know their threshold. We might still set them off.”

Grey mode run? I’ve failed to keep my bafflement from migrating to my face, obviously, because Kathryn quickly explains, “turn down all energy levels to bare minimum, then cut engines and glide forwards on momentum. Did that a few times on _Voyager_.” I nod, thinking of how, in gangster movies, they do the same with cars. “We’ll just have to risk it, Mister Paris,” she goes on, in her usual commanding tones. “I want sensors, shields, engines and weapons back online again as quickly as possible, though; we still don’t know what’s behind that shield, do we?”

“Not yet, Admiral. And an active scan might set the sensor network off,” Althea replies. 

“Agreed. How long will this take?”

“Tom’s powering down the warp core already, Admiral; complete grey mode will be reached in two minutes forty; with one last impulse burst before we shut down the reactors, we should make it through the network’s range in eighteen minutes. Powering up the systems you mentioned would take another three minutes.”

“If you concentrate on cold-starting the warp drive and let me work on the other systems-” Kathryn starts, and Althea nods assent quickly.

“-we could be done in one. Maybe even less, if we meld.”

Kathryn does a double-take, then grins toothily. “Sounds fascinating. Let’s do it.”

The lights drop, and an almost inaudible hum stops. “Air circulation,” the Doctor murmurs when I look around, “life support goes down to minimum, too. I’ll deactivate myself, then, shall I?”

“Yes, Doctor,” Kathryn says with a quick smiling glance at him. “I’ll reactivate you when we’re through. See you in twenty minutes.”

“Grey mode complete but for impulse engines,” Althea calls out.

“Give me a one-second, one-quarter impulse burst and then cut them, Lieutenant. Leave maneuvering thrusters online.”

“Aye, Admiral,” Tom says. “One-quarter impulse, thrusters ready. Here we go.” The ship seems to shoot forwards, and I stumble back from the consoles. 

“Sorry,” I mumble to Kathryn, who smiles at me, releasing my arm. 

“Inertia dampeners operate on minimum, too,” she replies just as softly, “should have warned you. I’m sorry.”

“At least they do work, right?” Then I smirk, looking around the darkened bridge. “Time for breakfast, now, I’d say.”

She grimaces. “Cold porridge? Honestly, Marie.”

“You’ve got to eat, and it’s what’s there. I guess replicators are offline, too?” 

My wife looks at me for a long moment, then sighs and complies. “I don’t even have coffee to go with it,” she grumbles after the first spoonful.

I wordlessly retrieve the thermos flask and cup from the console they’d rolled behind. Good thing the flask has a tight seal, right?

“Bless you, Crewman.”

“Pushing for ensign by flattering flag officers never works, Marie,” Tom teases me.

“Currying favor with my wife might,” I give back, and Kathryn’s smile over the rim of her cup reminds me of… I take a deep breath through a closed throat and look out at the stars, seeing rainbows when we’re not even at warp.

This always happens. Minutes, hours will pass in which I function quite normally, and then something makes me stop and… and hurt. Damn exasperating, and inconvenient, too. It throws me off balance when it happens, which is not a good thing when I’m one of a crew of five that’s planning to retake _Voyager_ from its kidnappers, is it. _Pull yourself together, Vey._

Kathryn leaves me to myself in those moments, as if she knew that, if she put her hand on my shoulder as I’ve seen her do countless times, it would rip through all my carefully constructed composure. This wife of mine isn’t half-bad at perceptiveness, and at that special kind of trust that says ‘I know you’ll do it.’ 

I’m getting there. 

A dark shape flits by over our heads, and I duck instinctively. 

“What the hell-” Kathryn begins, handing me her empty bowl for safe-keeping. “I’d say that was a bit too close for comfort, Lieutenant.”

“It didn’t hit us, did it.” Oh, he tries for cockiness, but his smile is shaky. He hadn’t seen that one coming, either, I’m willing to bet. “Must’ve been one of the sensor pods. At least we now know we’re halfway through, right?”

Kathryn throws him a look that says ‘one of these days I’ll call you out, Mister’, but only nods. Then she turns towards Althea. “When do we need to enter the meld?”

“Eight minutes, give or take, Admiral. I’ll give you a shout.”

“I’ll be back in a bit, then.” No one bats an eye – it’s not only me who’s used to her bathroom breaks, it seems. I retrieve all four bowls and wedge them in behind one of the consoles, seeing as I can’t recycle them. 

“Ingenious,” Tom grins. 

“I don’t want them flying around when we hit the next sensor pod,” I quip at him, and his grin is replaced by a mock scowl. “Can you tell me,” I ask to defuse him, “how the power-up sequence works, in theory? I mean, without starting it?”

“Course. First thing you need to do is-” I sink into his words and his companionship. Tom was the first person I met on Voyager; the first friend I made, too – Kathryn doesn’t count, after all. I like his easy-going way, his seriousness when called for, and the deep, bottomless supply of silliness beneath. Good thing I’m not into guys, seeing that he’s married and who he’s married to – you wouldn’t want to cross a half-Klingon, and B’Elanna is a good friend by now, too. 

It’s amazing to see how they hold up, despite everything the press had thrown at them – ex-Maquis, half-blood, Starfleet princeling; the name-calling had been terrible, and the innuendo worse. But there’s love in that union, and determination. From what Kathryn has told me, Tom had not quite faced his father down over his choice of partner, but he _had_ stood by B’Elanna’s side and made his father come around. And all this adversity seemed only to have forged them closer together instead of exhausting them, as sometimes happens. 

Will this do the same for Kathryn and me, too? Adversity it certainly is. And I do feel grateful to my wife, coming for me as she had, including me in this rescue operation even though I don’t know the first thing about starship ops, or consoles, or LCARS. Well. Alright, so I do know a bit, by now, but still…

I hear her steps – I know them by sound, have done so for months. I feel her warmth behind me – she’ll ever get just that little bit too far into people’s personal space, a habit she’s developed in the Delta Quadrant from what she tells me, her body fighting the loneliness of command in a little mutiny of its own. I yearn to reach back for an embrace that’s totally out of the question. 

“Are we out of range yet?”

“I guess so, Admiral,” Althea responds, and I’m glad it’s not me who has to give such a vague answer. “There’s no telling-”

“Actually, there is,” Tom says, sounding quite smug. “Those were your run-of-the-mill, standard-issue proximity sensors. I recognized them when we flew past the one; Starfleet uses them, too. Their maximum range is customarily ten thousand kilometers, and they can’t be teased up past more than twelve. We’re fifteen thousand kilometers behind them now, so I guess we’re safe.”

“Good thing you took us so close then, wasn’t it, Lieutenant.” The corner of Kathryn’s mouth comes up and she pats his shoulder. “Prepare to take us out of grey mode and into red alert, Commander.”

“Sit down, please, Admiral, and we can begin.”

I would love nothing better than to watch the reactions flicker across Kathryn’s face when she sits down at the engineering station and closes her eyes, but Tom tugs at my arm to draw my attention to the consoles, to follow what they’re doing far more professionally. 

“See how the sensors come online? I bet they’re doing them first because the Admiral wants to know what’s out there,” Tom breathes while familiar sounds slowly spring into life all around us. “Impulse reactors to power everything up again, warp drive… and there are the shields and weapons systems. Secondary systems powering up – that’s this monitor.” He raises his voice, “all systems up and functioning, Admiral. That must have been the smoothest power-up I’ve ever witnessed.”

“Thanks, Tom, but flattering flag officers never works,” Kathryn replies in those dry tones of her. “Computer, activate ECH.” 

“Thank you, Admiral.” He slips behind the tactical console. 

“Doctor, what’s behind those shields? Don’t tell me we still can’t get any readings?”

I watch closely over the Doctor’s shoulder as he enters a few commands. Hell, I know what he’s doing. It feels incredible. 

“Three energy signatures,” he replies tersely, “one of them massive, the other two smaller. One of those might be _Voyager_ ; the other seems to be a smaller ship. Readings seem to indicate the shield is being generated by the big ship alone, to judge by its layout and harmonics. The power output is enormous, Admiral; we can’t take it down with our weapons.”

“We don’t have to.” Althea’ voice is calm and deadly. “I can modulate our shields to their frequency. We’ll cut through like a knife through butter.”

Kathryn’s words easily match the healer’s tone. “Do it, and get me readings about what’s going on on those ships. I don’t want _Voyager_ to blow up on me when we’ve just found it.”

“Aye, Admiral. Approaching the perimeter. They don’t seem to be reacting. Contact in three, two, one – I’m through.” Her grin doesn’t hold a trace of humor. “Now they’re reacting. Getting readings, now. The large one’s a holo-ship, one hundred thirty-five life signs, the next one’s _Voyager_ , eighteen life signs, the smallest is another Defiant-class starship, powering up weapons and heading for us.”

“Evasive maneuvers, Mister Paris. Can we beam into the ships?”

“Affirmative,” the Doctor calls out, “ _Voyager_ doesn’t have its shields up yet, it seems the engines are down completely. The holo-ship’s shields are ineffective, now that we’re inside them, as it were.” 

“Understood. Doctor, you and Kalliste beam over to _Voyager_. Get the ship under your control; use any necessary means including the self-destruct. It mustn’t fall into Section 31 hands, is that clear?”

The two doctors are already moving towards the transporter. “Aye,” is their unison answer.

“We won’t contact you; can’t have a combadge signal at the wrong moment, right? But notify me the instant you’re done, Doctor. Tom, energize. Miss Vey and me will beam over to the holo-ship’s command center and get the crew. Once we’re gone, raise your shields and outfly this one,” she ducks as the Defiant-class ship fires its phasers and misses. “If you can disable them, do it, but don’t risk too much. You’re our back-up if things go pear-shaped.”

“Understood, Admiral.”

“Crewman, grab a phaser rifle; time to test those Velocity-honed reflexes.” I feel slightly sick, but what can I do? Even Althea had a rifle in hand when they beamed over, and I still remember how she said she wouldn’t shoot people. “If all of my crew are still alive, we should be facing nineteen adversaries, including the two impersonators. If for some reason you should get us mixed up-” she flashes a grin at me, then slips off her wedding ring and gives it to me. “Put that in your pocket and give me yours to keep.”

“Aye, Admiral,” I say weakly, and step onto the transporter pad. 

~~~

Taking out the three people manning the control center is easy – I take down one of them, Kathryn two, then she orders me to guard the door and gets to work on the holo-ship’s controls. “They’ve recreated _Voyager_ in here,” she calls out, “let’s see if I can’t stop the program from he-” the console she’s standing at blows up. In her face.

“Kathryn!” I’m at her side in a heartbeat and yet not nearly close enough. She groans when I grab her shoulder and turn her around. 

“Don’t leave your station, Crewman,” she manages, but I’m more concentrated on her face. Secondary burns, and her eyes are already bloodshot; the skin around them looks tender, almost raw. Her fingers don’t look much better; she must have had them on the console when it happened.

“Computer, lock door and open only at my vocal command.” The consoles are Starfleet, and apparently, the computer is, too – I recognize an acknowledging chirp and set my rifle aside. Next – medkit. “Kathryn, stay with me. Count, or something, please.” I can hear a slight murmur of assent and then numbers, and rise, propping her up against the console that just blew. I tear through the cupboards and drawers and come up empty-handed, so I risk activating a console, myself, to try and access the MSD. “Holy shit,” I mumble when it finally flickers to life. “Computer, show any life signs in a fifty-meter radius around this room.” I curse again. Twenty, seventeen of which are converging on us. And of course, a couple of them are between the nearest medkit and this room. “Highlight all positions of medkits.” Ah. Still. A goddamn Jefferies tube. Kathryn is still counting. “Kathryn, which phaser setting will seal the doors?”

“Level five, narrow beam,” she rasps, voice heavy with pain. “Take out the control panel beside the door first.”

“Level five, narrow beam,” I repeat, punching at the rifle’s controls and firing, one quick, one sustained burst. “Alright, that should do it. Come on.”

“You go on without me, Crewman. Get to-”

As if. “I’m not leaving you here, Kathryn. You can’t see, so you can’t shoot, so you’ll be a sitting duck for them, and I can’t work enough of these controls to do this on my own. So what we’re going to do is – I’ll get you to the medkit, treat your wounds, and we’ll take it from there.” Well, at least she doesn’t dispute my decision. I sling her rifle across my shoulder and lead her to the hatch. Open it, help her through, close it, seal that with a shot, too. Sling my own rifle across my other shoulder and grab her waist. “Put your arms around my neck and hold on while I lift you, then cross your ankles behind my back to stay put.”

“I can walk well enough, Marie.” 

“But you can’t climb a ladder, can you?”

“A ladder?” Her turn to curse when she forgets her injury and tries to raise – non-existent – eyebrows. “Marie, you can’t-”

“I’ve told you what we’ll do. I’m not leaving you, and I can’t carry you piggy-back – if you lose your hold on me, you’ll fall, and I’m not risking that, so you go front.” I grin. “Resistance is futile.” I find a spot on her chin that doesn’t look singed and touch it. “Come on. There’s a medkit at the end of this, Kathryn.” She slips her arms around me, suppressing another groan when her cheek touches my shoulder. Her swell presses into my midriff, and I barely suppress a giggle when I feel our daughter kick me. “Hey, I’m on your side, little one. Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Kathryn says dryly, and I start.

Good thing we’re going down, not up. Still, after twenty rungs, I’m breathing hard. We reach the next hatch, I push her through, and I’ve barely slipped inside, too, when a shot frizzles by from above. “Good timing,” I pant, “turn away, I’ll weld this one closed, too.” I’m getting the hang of this. “Now; next problem is – you can’t crawl, and I can’t carry you inside a Jefferies tube. Ideas?”

“You could move without – no, listen. I’m not saying you should leave me, Marie,” somewhere, Kathryn finds a smile for me, “but couldn’t you get that medkit and come back here?”

“Afraid not. It’s down this tube for ten meters, turn left, down another for twenty-four, and up two decks. They’ll be on you long before I’m back.”

“Good grief, Marie, wasn’t there a medkit any closer than this?”

“Well, yes, but it was blocked. Kathryn, is there any way we can prevent them from opening hatches short of welding them close? I don’t want to deplete this rifle’s energy pack too quickly.” 

“There should be an access panel around here somewhere. Open it, and tell me what you see.”

“Isolinear circuitry, and a rectangular board with nine slots, and seven chips in those.”

“Color and sequence?”

“Top row, left to right: empty, green, green. Second row: blue, green, blue. Third row: empty, yellow, blue.”

“Got it. Exchange the leftmost blue one in the second row and the yellow one, and put the middle green one from the top row to the empty socket of the third row.”

“Done.”

“Now deactivate the control – there’s a flip-switch for that – then take out the yellow one and activate the control again. That overloads the lockout mechanisms on either side of the hatch, fusing them in place, so shield yourself.”

“Okay.” I grin and follow Kathryn’s orders. They end in a very satisfactory shower of sparks.

“Thanks. Now…” My eyes notice something. “These panels are duranium, aren’t they?”

“Yes – why?”

“‘Cause you’re going to sit down on this one and let me pull you. How are you holding up, so far?”

“My face and fingertips hurt like hell, but I’ll manage,” she grimaces. “And Baby Janeway is dancing on my bladder again.”

“Dying Swan?” I take off my jacket and rip off its sleeves to rig a pulling yoke. 

“Irish jig.”

“Ouch.” I smirk. “Now, Princess Katherine, will you sit down on your sled?”

“No I won’t.” She smirks my protest away. “If I _lie_ down, though, it’ll distribute the weight to make it easier to pull. That panel large enough?”

“It’s right here; try it – no, feet first. I don’t want to kick your head by accident.” 

“Thanks.”

“Take the rifle; this tube is narrow enough for even potshots to hit.”

“Potshots, eh? I’m not going to thank you for that, you know.” Still, I can hear the smile in her words, and it makes pulling a little easier. 

“Off we go…” The sled begins to move. Then I think of something. “There are hatches every few meters, aren’t there? I can fuse them all- oops, sorry.”

“Uh-huh.” Then my foot hits the sled a second time, eliciting a second oomph.

“Sorry for the bumpy ride, Kathryn.” Help her across the rails, shut hatch, fuse hatch. Get going again.

“Good God, Marie, thank you for that bumpy ride. Even though you’re disobeying orders.”

“Well, don’t tell the Admiral, then.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” she tells me, and again, I can hear her amusement. The situation is certainly silly enough to warrant a smile or two. Or it would be, if I weren’t pulling a victim of second-degree electronic burns toward a medkit, pursued by armed enemies. “Here we are; let me help you up.” Cross the junction, close and fuse two more hatches, pull off again. Twenty-four meters mean four more hatches; I’m getting the hang of this – doesn’t take me much longer than fifteen seconds to blow them up by now.

“Yee-haw,” I mumble when we arrive at the junction to the vertical shaft. Blow up more controls, carry Kathryn up two decks. The first is easy. The last, though, is unbelievably exhausting. And that last hatch, when I open it, gets blown straight out of my hand. I push Kathryn’s head down. “Say, Kathryn, can you see anything at all, or just blackness?”

“Blurs, and motion.”

“Do you think you can cover me while I get the medkit? It should be right next to the hatch, so I’d be in the line of fire, retrieving it.”

“I can make it a wide beam; your job to stay out of it, Crewman.”

“Aye, Admiral; welcome back.” She lifts the rifle and starts shooting. “A bit more to the right, please!” Better. 

I grit my teeth and jump, use the momentum to roll and come up, covered by the wall on the opposite side of the niche. Kathryn gives another volley; two quick steps bring me to the medkit’s access panel. 

“Got it; move aside!” I jump back into the Jefferies tube and Kathryn slams the hatch close behind me, cursing at how it hurts her fingers. I scan the contents of the medkit quickly and find the blue-colored hypo. “Painkiller, ma’am?” She nods gratefully, and I inject her. “I saw another tube branching off one deck further up; let’s move there.” I can already hear the scuffling beyond this hatch and fuse it with motions that I hardly have to think about any longer.

“Agreed.” 

“You know, I’m cutting off all sorts of escape routes here,” I muse, leading her over to the next hatch and fusing that as well, once we’re through. “I just hope there’ll be another way out. Up you go, now.”

“You mean you haven’t looked?”

“Well, I’m sorry, but the location of the medkit seemed of more importance. I think we’re close to the actual holodeck, though, for what’s it worth.”

“You think.” She sounds as if she wants to shake me, but since she’s being carried again – not to mention severely burned – there’s nothing much she can do. “More tactical training for you when we get back, Crewman. A lot more.” Do her words sound a little slurred? Or is she just exhausted? I know I am. 

“Sorry, Admiral.” I stop to take out another hatch. Then, twenty-two more rungs and a third hatch later, I heave us into the – hopefully – last Jefferies tube and run her over with the medical tricorder from the kit. “Second degree burns on the upper half of your face, third degree on your fingertips. Now… regenerator, regenerator – ah. I’ll start with your eyes. Hold still, love.”

“You haven’t called me that for ages, you know,” Kathryn leans into me, sighing happily. Good grief, what _have_ I injected her with? Blue hypos _are_ painkillers, I’m sure of that. At least it seems to have worked as an analgesic, too. 

“I’m sorry, love. I do think the rest of the crew might have objected.” I gently push her away from me to get better access to her face.

“Chakotay had it right, you know,” she tells me seriously, sounding – well, drunk, to tell the truth. 

“Hm?” I reply absent-mindedly, concentrating on her left eye and the tissue around it. Her next words almost make me drop the regenerator, though.

“He said I trusted him with my life, but not with my emotions, and that it hurt him that I trusted _you_ with them so easily.”

I cough a little, trying to regain composure. “And what did you say to that?”

“Well, I thought about it for a moment and said, it’s only logical, it’s what you’re both trained for.” She giggles, once, and slumps into me again. “I mean, here I’m trusting you with my life and find myself in a Jefferies tube, escape routes blocked and a bunch of baddies on our tails.”

I wince. Still, it’s true, isn’t it? I patently am not trained for this. I did block several escape routes, I did inject her with something that seems to act like a truth serum or something… More tactical training for me, please, if – _when_ , I correct myself – we get back. I switch to Kathryn’s right eye, and she tries to cup my cheek, hissing when the contact brings fresh pain. 

“Marie, you’re amazing, you know that?”

“I’m not. I got us stuck here, and-”

“Stuck? Goddammit, you carried me all the way here, and now you’re restoring my eyesight! I thought I’d die in that control room, you know. I had already resigned myself to a heroic, if unseeing, death.” Her kiss distracts me for a moment. 

“Kathryn-”

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I’ll be good.” She’s silent while I finish on her right eye and take her right hand, next. It’s only the fingertips that are burned, really, but it must hurt a lot. “It tingles,” she tells me. Well, that’s not so bad. “You know what I thought when Chakotay said that?”

“No…” Again, my brain reacts on autopilot, and again, her answer stuns me. 

“I thought if he’d ever been just a little more… pushy, he could have had that trust years ago.”

Hell. Hell and… and _bloody_ hell. And I can’t keep the mortification out of my face, either, nor hide how short of breath I suddenly am. 

“Marie?”

“I…” _Countenance, Vey. You have an admiral to heal and a ship to retake._ “Nothing.”

“Like hell it’s nothing.” Too loud. Still slurred. It helps me compartmentalize, at least. 

“Let’s talk about this another time, alright? You’re not… quite yourself. Admiral.” Maybe the use of her rank will help her, too.

She shakes her head as if to clear it of cobwebs, then grimaces. “What have you hypo’d me with, Crewman?”

“The blue one,” I reply, and she grabs it as soon as I release her right hand. There’s a clanking noise in the tube, but it sounds a way away. 

Kathryn groans. “Bicaridine?” 

“What’s wrong with it?” 

“Well, nothing,” she says airily, then her voice grows sardonic, “unless you’re _pregnant_. _Then_ it reacts with the… the… the _progesterone_ in your blood stream and,” she grimaces and gestures with the blasted cylinder, “makes you drunk.” Putting the hypo back is hampered by a slight swaying and overreaching, which in turn is greeted with a grumble. I slowly unfreeze again. Nothing bad for the baby, so, is it? “Done with that hand?” she asks me, and, when I nod, “Lemme see the medkit.” She rummages for a bit, then grabs something triumphantly. “Hah! Inoprovaline. Knew it must be in here somewhere.” She loads it into the hypospray and injects herself. Her eyes close for a moment, and open again, much clearer than before. “Less… _Let’s_ find a computer interface. Bring the medkit, though, and use its tricorder to scan for life forms.” 

I sling the kit across my shoulder, where it clatters into the rifle. Then I follow my admiral wife. What else can I do? We take out three more people, enter the holodeck via the door they’d been guarding, and find ourselves in the aft lounge – well, at least I know my way around here. 

Kathryn looks around, too. “Pass me that tricorder, will you?” I look over her shoulder while she does something to the thing; something that passes by _way_ over my head, and which she assures me will modify the tricorder’s sensor to scan for the real power conduits and controls, not those that the holo-program recreates. Then, with a quick tap to her combadge, “Tom, status report.”

“Admiral – I don’t have anything on the Doctor, so far. _Voyager_ is still hanging dead in space. That Defiant-class ship keeps hounding me, but I’m keeping _Voyager_ between it and me; seems they don’t want to hit your ship.”

“They’d better not.”

“Agreed, Admiral,” I can hear Tom grin cheerily. “They’ve got their shields up by now, and the holo-ship has reconfigured theirs, too, to protect themselves. So I can’t bring out the guns to help you. How are things at your end?”

“We’re trying to shut down the program, and/or disable the impostors; any ideas would be greatly appreciated.”

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about the Doctor’s theory. If you can find a holographic phaser, and reprogram it to-” again, what follows is so completely beyond me that I give up after ten words or so. Kathryn seems to understand it perfectly, though. Of course she would. 

“Good idea, we’ll try that. Keep safe, Tom.”

“You, too, Admiral. _Garuda_ out.”

Kathryn turns to me and grabs her rifle more assertively. “There’s a weapons locker in Engineering, and this-” she holds up her rigged tricorder, “tells me the nearest holodeck control is a deck up from there. No one between here and there, either. Let’s go.” 

I grab her arm to stop her. “The route _might_ seem clear, but – what if the holo emitters can give false readings to scanning devices? They might make a tricorder say there’s nothing there, couldn’t they?”

“Well, be prepared for everything, then. And Marie?” This time, she doesn’t hiss when she touches my cheek. Her kiss is short, and sweet. “Good going, so far. Keep it up.” Her grin is just as quick, and I can only manage a nod.

* * *

There are indeed four people waiting for them in the corridor – and they’re wearing standard uniforms, not the black fatigues they’ve seen on the people outside the simulation. _Members of my crew_ , Kathryn thinks, but, seeing phasers pointed at her, her aim is true, nevertheless. _Probably alerted to intruders, and none of them knows Marie yet._ Her wife takes out two this time, just as Kathryn does. 

“Aim’s getting better,” Kathryn tosses off over her shoulder while they hurry towards the nearest Jefferies tube. 

“Yeah, last time we played Velocity I almost won a round.” Marie’s voice drips with irony. “And you were only four months pregnant that day.”

“And tired from just having come from Mars,” Kathryn adds with a smirk, coming to a halt in front of the hatch. “You know, I keep wondering why we haven’t encountered any force fields yet; it’s the logical step when there’s an intruder aboard.”

“Maybe Troi is trying to help?” Marie suggests. “Sabotage, or something?”

“Maybe.” They climb in and up. “Still, we should try and take internal sensors out while we’re in Engineering. Even if they’re only holographic ones; they must have programmed this close enough to the original or people would notice.”

“Agreed. What will we do in a hostage situation, though?”

“Let me do the talking, and be quick on your feet. I know you can do that.” Kathryn steps off the ladder and scans the next hatch. Marie follows with a huff, but at least it’s not an ironic one. “Still reads clear; I guess we’ll have to take our chances.”

Engineering’s back door is guarded by two more security officers – _good man, Flo, but you need quicker draws_. Then again, seeing their commanding officer coming towards them, phaser rifle cocked, might account for that split second of hesitation, and Kathryn isn’t about to turn that down. 

“I bet there are people in here, too, no matter what the tricorder says,” she whispers to Marie. “Let’s see if we can sneak in and out unseen; I’ll get to the locker while you cover me. It’s on the left; position yourself on the right wall. Think of that see-through floor; people might spot us from the lower level, so you’ll have to watch it.”

“Right,” Marie nods. 

“Let’s go.”

Getting in is easy. Opening the locker while kneeling at its side is not. Kathryn winces at each click the locks make, imagining a shout, a shoot-out, any second. 

“Admiral,” a familiar, urgent voice calls out from the lower level, “step away from that locker. I might be the only one in here, but I have a phaser pointed right at you.” 

Kathryn turns around slowly, trying not to betray Marie – her wife’s still out of the line of sight, and might just be her winning trump. “B’Elanna – I need your help. We have intruders aboard, and-”

“I know. And I know just whom she’s impersonating.”

Movement to Kathryn’s right. “B’Elanna, I swear she’s my wife, not a doppelganger.” Well. At least Marie has that rifle still up.

“Marie!” Voyager’s chief engineer gasps. “So _Garuda_ didn’t explode! I knew it!” She slaps a console, then holsters her phaser and virtually flies up the ladder to their level. “Tom’s alive, isn’t he?” Kathryn has to admire B’Elanna’s restraint – she doesn’t hug Marie when Marie nods, just balls her hands into tight fists for a moment and closes her eyes, nostrils flaring. Then she punches Marie on the arm. “Crewman, eh? Got drafted?”


	7. Into the Thick of Things

Having B’Elanna at our side is a good thing, for several reasons, even though my arm still smarts. She’s a far better shot than me, and she understands Tom’s plan and can help Kathryn implement it with a lot more skill than I ever could. 

“I knew something was wrong when the Doctor had to be deactivated,” B’Elanna tells Kathryn as we make our way through Jefferies tubes towards the holodeck controls Kathryn’s rigged tricorder had shown her. “Then you – well, your double, started behaving very oddly, and the first officer, too, you know; ordering people off the bridge, shifting duty rosters for no reason, and finally sending all of us to our quarters with no explanation at all. So I asked Sam and Naomi to look after Miral in their quarters, and took internal sensors offline to mask what I was doing. And while I did _that_ , I noticed that the systems weren’t reacting like they should. Didn’t take me too long to figure out we were on a holodeck, either, and then I thought of the same thing you did.” She casually takes out two of the five guards standing around the inconspicuous-looking bit of corridor. 

“This, too, you know?” she continues after we’ve stunned all of them, opening a wall panel to reveal more circuitry and control panels than I’d ever thought possible. Kathryn and she start doing something to bits of it in short order while I watch their backs. Oh yes, B’Elanna is far better at this than me – she doesn’t even have to talk to Kathryn; they work hand in hand. I clamp down on my envy and apply myself to the task I’ve been given. “Guarding bits of corridor, or Engineering’s back entrance? Commander Flo didn’t take kindly to it, so he assigned the greenest ensigns he could find; I’m surprised that Commander Troi let that one pass. I think she’s part of this conspiracy or whatever, you know. She must be; I mean, she’s an empath, right? I don’t know why Althea’s putting up with all this, they’re probably threatening her kids, the p’taqs.” B’Elanna punches the console they’re working on.

“Althea’s been replaced, too,” I reply to that before things get out of hand. 

B’Elanna whirls to shoot me a disbelieving glance, then concentrates on the conduit she’s prepping again. “So we have three impostors aboard?”

“We think there’s only the two, B’Elanna; Althea and myself,” Kathryn answers. “But speaking of the kids – have they made any threatening moves?”

B’Elanna growls. “Not to my face, they haven’t. But the possibility crossed my mind, of course. So Althea… Troi…” B’Elanna shakes her head. “Admiral, you know I haven’t been exactly…” her voice trails away.

“I know you miss Chakotay, B’Elanna,” Kathryn says softly, eyes fixed on her own work, “and I knew that there was a distinct possibility that you and our new first officer wouldn’t exactly hit it off. You’re reacting very professionally towards Commander Troi, I know that, and I thank you for it. I shudder to think how the last days must have been for both of you.”

“Well, at least I didn’t have to share my quarters with a stranger posing as my partner,” B’Elanna mutters darkly. “No wonder she’s gone so cold.”

A hand touches my arm briefly, and from the corners of my eyes I see Kathryn grit her teeth. I guess she’s thinking the same thing I am – how would I have reacted, faced with someone who looked like my wife, but was not only someone else, but also someone who could (and probably had) threatened my family, my friends, the ship I was on? I sidle a little closer to Kathryn to let her know I got her message – nothing more I can do; watching her back diligently is the best answer I can give her right now.

“There. Closing that circuit should end the program, _and_ lower everyone to ground floor level smoothly.” In response to B’Elanna’s claim, Kathryn straightens and groans softly, and still I don’t look back at my pregnant wife nor touch her back, however much it costs me. I’d hate myself if carelessness spoiled our plan, however free of people the corridor looks. 

I hear a long release of breath, and the admiral’s voice, next. “Do we have a way of telling where everyone is? Or did you take out the internal sensors for good?”

“Sorry, Admiral.”

Kathryn sighs. “Can’t be helped. I’ll take the altered phaser; it should take out their holo-emitters. Still, both of you, prepare to shoot Kalliste or my double on sight. Level four is only a stun level, remember, Crewman?”

“Yes, Admiral.” My voice cracks, but my hands are quite steady. 

B’Elanna grins tightly. “I’ve never liked it much, but… Qapla’, Admiral, Crewman.”

We regroup, positioning ourselves into a half circle, Kathryn flanked by B’Elanna on her right and me on her left. With one hand and behind her back, she closes the circuit, and the walls waver and dissolve while B’Elanna and I close ranks. Good thing I’ve already seen my share of holo-programs end, otherwise this would be quite befuddling. And we don’t need a befuddled mind behind a trigger finger, do we? For some reason, though, I hadn’t pictured the doppelganger pregnant. And that moment’s hesitation is a crucial one.

B’Elanna quickly takes out two security officers pointing weapons at us, then Kathryn hits the fake Althea with the modulated phaser, indeed taking out the holo-emitter. B’Elanna targets the slender figure that’s revealed, downing her, too, while Kathryn yells to hold fire in her most commanding voice. She’s too late, though, and crumbles, right next to me, with a horrible little sigh, so much smaller than what she’d uttered just before. It sickens me and freezes me and… and then I’m hit, too, and everything blackens out. 

I find myself in chaos when I reopen my eyes. Phaser fire zips by all around, and there’s nowhere to take cover, of course. A tall Andorian and five more security officers hold two pregnant admirals and a small, slender stranger at gunpoint while _Voyager’s_ crew, led by B’Elanna and Commander Troi, apparently try to take out the black-clad figures of the conspirators, or Section 31 agents, or whatever they are. Next to the ring of yellow shoulders is another, a group of kids in its midst.

“Marie!” B’Elanna calls out to me when she sees me awake. “We lost the phaser and can’t tell who’s who; we need to get to the controls. Grab a phaser and relieve Gunnarson!”

I do as I’m told, finding myself pointing a weapon at two versions of my wife. Seeing them sans combadge, I get an idea. “Permission to contact the _Garuda_ , sir?”

It’s the Andorian who answers – _Voyager’s_ security chief, I remember, even though I can’t think of his name. “Granted, Crewman.”

I tap my combadge instantly. “Tom, what’s going on out there?”

“I was just about to ask you the same, Marie; I’m reading a steady energy build-up that’s reaching critical levels, are you on auto-destruct over there?” A whining sound and electric crackles accompany his words. “I can’t beam you out through those shields, you know. The Doctor and Althea have just called in that they’ve secured _Voyager_ , but they can’t operate the ship on their own, much less get into a space fight, and they have their own shie- _got_ you!” he yells suddenly, loud enough that B’Elanna’s head shoots around. Then she resumes the fight, with even more fury than before. 

“Tom!” I call when I hear nothing more from him.

“Sorry, Marie, I’m a bit busy over here – hah! You know, I love this ship. I might not be able to take her into as tight a turn as Althea can, but- bull’s eye!” He whoops, and even our ship rocks suddenly. “That’s that taken care of. The small vessel’s down, Marie. There are more ships coming, but they’re too far away yet. If you drop your shields now, we can beam you all out and get out of here.”

“We’re trying to, but there are a few people fighting us. This energy build-up – how long…” I have no idea how to put this into words, but he understands.

“Two minutes, at most. You gotta get out of there, Marie. And what’s wrong with the admiral? She isn’t answering my hails.”

“Long story, Tom – can’t go into it now. I have no idea how long we’re going to need to get to the controls-” my heart runs cold. “I have no idea how many people we can beam over in a hurry, Tom. We need to coordinate that, somehow.”

“Agreed. I’ll tell _Voyager_ , and we’ll have the cargo bays ready for mass transport. From what I know, a holo-ship’s transporters are massive – they should be able to manage a large number of people at once, at least the last one I heard of was. Still, you need to determine who’s going first, and who’s going through your transporters and who through ours.”

“Lieutenant; ch’Vlossen here,” the Andorian enters our conversation. “Good thinking all around; as soon as our shields go down, lock on to the senior staff and beam them over. You’ll find two signatures of the admiral; have them both beamed to single cells in the brig – no questions on that one, just do it.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Beam the children out, next, and as many as you can after that. If we can group people in any sensible way before this ship blows up, I’ll let you know. If we can’t do anything about this, you’re to auto-destruct _Garuda_ , beam to _Voyager_ , and get out of here before these other ships arrive. Try to shed a light onto what’s been happening here. Access my personal logs, authorization Flo sigma three beta six. You’ll find my thoughts on the matter there. Just in case.” Flo – ch’Vlossen, I suddenly remember, and how pleased he was when I gave the ch’ the full German worth.

“Aye, sir,” Tom repeats. “Best of luck. _Garuda_ out.”

ch’Vlossen turns to me. “Crewman, good thinking there. Do you have any way to tell us which admiral is the real one, by any chance?”

“There should be a modified phaser around, sir,” I reply.

“I know; Lieutenant Torres told me. But it was lost in the melee, kicked I don’t know where. And I can’t try every phaser I find lying around.”

Troi shouts out, fiercely, from behind. “That’s it! Get to those doors, Lieutenant, and find the controls.”

“Shields and transporters,” ch’Vlossen barks over the din, his voice incredibly loud. “We’ve got less than ninety seconds until self-destruct. _Voyager’s_ secured and they will take the staff officers and our two admirals; we need to take care of the rest. Target their cargo bays, number two first!”

“Aye, sir,” B’Elanna responds, while Troi flashes the big Andorian the okay-gesture. 

“Now, back to this,” he returns his eyes to me. “You’re her mate. If you know anything…”

“Have you searched them?” I ask him, never taking my eyes off the two. They’re identical, in every detail.

“Yes, and we found these in their pockets.” He reaches out two wedding rings and I groan. Then his combadge chirps. “ch’Vlossen here.”

“Commander,” B’Elanna’s voice is intent, “we’ve found the transporter controls but internal sensors aren’t fully operational; we can’t get a lock on people without combadges. The Doctor said _Voyager_ can’t, either.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant. We’re just trying to resolve that, in fact. Don’t beam me over until I give you the all-clear; inform _Voyager_ of this, too.” He looks at me expectantly over B’Elanna’s ‘aye, sir’.

“Please tell me you remember which ring you found on which admiral,” I beg him through gritted teeth.

“I don’t see-” then he blanches, too. “They aren’t identical, I take it?”

“No.” Shit. Now what? _Think, Vey,_ think, _for God’s sake; ask them something only Kathryn would know._ But then, this impostor might be a telepath; hell, I certainly would employ a telepath on a mission like this. Both Kathryns are looking at me calmly, with almost identical tension lines around their eyes. No help from that quarter, either; not that I’d expected it. _Damnit, Vey, think!_

“Commander,” I hear Troi calling out, far calmer than B’Elanna had sounded, “Mulcahey found the auto-destruct. He’s working on it, but the countdown’s at thirty and we’ve still got the shields up.”

“Acknowledged. Thanks for the heads-up, Commander.”

 _Yeah, thanks for making this even more difficult._ One Kathryn’s mouth twitches. Is she a telepath doppelganger, then, reading my thoughts? Or is she my wife, reading my frustration on my face? _Don’t think what hinges on this, Vey. Detach yourself. Think of what Unre has told you about shielding, too. Calm down, find the white, pull it up around yourself._ I close my eyes, trying to still my breath, my wildly beating heart. But I can’t find the white, all I find is my wife’s face and my unborn child’s presence, here at the center of me. And then it comes to me, wrapping me in rightness, whiteness, resolve. I briefly put my hand in my own pocket, touch my wife’s wedding band like a talisman, and will this to be my own solution and not the suggestions of a telepath. 

“Permission to move in and touch them, sir.” ch’Vlossen looks at me with doubt clamoring in his eyes, then nods, sharply. 

Calm. White. Calm. No thoughts, just whiteness, moving towards my wife and the copy version of her. If the copy is a telepath, she mustn’t know. She _mustn’t_ know. I dimly hear Troi call out ‘fifteen’, and grin, widely, suddenly, concentrating on numbers, wildly random numbers. Thirteen, eighty-four. Twelve, one hundred and six. Eleven, four. Two sets of eyes narrow, but one of them different than the other; incredulous rather than confused. It makes me change course. 

My heart still beats furiously, for all my attempts to calm it down. It’s in my throat when I approach the figure on the left, it pulses in my lips when I kiss… my wife. Althea’s gift tells me so, and my heart sings in my ears when I step back and reach out for the combadge ch’Vlossen hands me. A familiar, stranger’s set of hands comes up and tries to grab me, but phasers take her down.

“Five. Four.” We dissolve.


	8. Easy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: for gaslighting/telepathic abuse/"mind rape"

“Easy, Marie; easy now.” Hands grab my shoulders when they shoot from the bed. Althea; familiar hands, and a familiar voice, but not the one I…

“Thanks, Healer, I’ll take it from here,” it rings out in all his throaty glory. I haven’t even opened my eyes yet, and when I feel Kathryn’s arms around me, I give up the need to. No, I cling to her unseeingly, shaking with the impact of returning memories. Five. Four. If I’d made the wrong choice… She bears the onslaught of my clenching fingers, my grasping arms, my sudden, shuddering tears in silence. Pillar of strength, my thoughts repeat, time and again; pillar of strength, my wife, my Kathryn, our child, my Kathryn, my love. 

I feel her lips on my cheek, their message in my mind – it’s alright. It’s over. Everything’s alright. Althea’s gift, never so cherished. And though it hurts, though I want to turn away and hide from the blade that’s cutting me, I find myself opening up to Kathryn’s love. Emotional release, a sane part of my mind states clinically, but for the most part I’m distracted by the way it all pours out in a dark, brackish flood; my doubts, my anger, my loneliness (and it’s only when it comes forth this way that I know it for what it is). My fear of failing her, my disgust with myself for failing to see, for being so weak; my helpless frustration at not finding a solution. And this, she picks out, and smiles at it, shining her love at the sodden tangle until it crumbles and dissolves. 

Silly Marie, her smile tells me, silly, silly Marie. “What makes you think you need to resolve a problem before you can take it to me? We’re partners in this dance, remember? If you stumble and can’t break your fall, I’ll catch you.” Her eyes are wet, too, but her smile is deeply, deeply teasing when she tells me, “Trust me.”

It makes me tear up again, but at least I find a smile of my own, somewhere in the mess of my muddled mind. “Did we-?” I look around me – sickbay, so familiar. Barely a year that I’ve woken up here for the first time. Even the damn privacy screen is back. The sight, and the thought, wakes another, dizzily amazed smile. Being here explains the strange angle of her embrace, too – I’m taller than usual, sitting on the biobed. Which leaves the question _why_ I’m here, though.

“Yes, we did. We’re back on _Voyager_ with all hands aboard. Commander ch’Vlossen managed to bring my doppelganger, too; she’s in the brig right now, awaiting interrogation. _Garuda_ is docked, Tom and B’Elanna reunited, and even the kids are mostly over their initial shock.” She looks at my baffled face and smiles, then detaches my arms for a moment to hop up to the bed, sliding one foot beneath the other leg the better to face me. “Three hours have passed. You collapsed when we arrived on _Voyager_ , Marie. Didn’t faint, but…”

I grimace, rubbing my nose, missing the feel and weight of my glasses. “I think I remember. Nervous breakdown would be closer to the mark, right?”

“The first officer called it an acute, stress-induced dysfunctional episode, if I remember correctly.”

 _She would._ “And the Doctor sedated me,” I grate. “ _God_ damnit. I mean I…” _deep breaths, Vey._ It was a correct response, after all – take the patient out of the situation, allow or enable them to adapt, ease them back into the situation. Kathryn watches me process it, then her arms come back up around me, and again, I find a smile. Leaning into them, I relax, more than I have in months, and for a blessed moment, there’s only the two of us, basking in each other’s nearness. Then the shuddering starts again, albeit without tears, this time. 

“How are you?” I ask her when I can, sitting up a little, but not pulling away from her.

“We’re both fine. None the worse for being stunned, or having bicaridine and inoprovaline in my system, at any rate.” I open my mouth to apologize and her finger slides across it, cool as usual. “Hush, Crewman. You saved my life out there, twice over.”

“Even though I was never trained for it.” It comes out bitter. So much so, in fact, that I almost feel apologetic, instantly, but she just sighs.

“I’m sorry, Marie. Sorry that it came out this way.”

“Well, it’s the truth. He was right. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept expecting to fail. I’ve never felt more out of my depth than on this mission, never. Don’t take kindly to it, either.” The sound I produce is halfway between a huff and a giggle, and firmly outside Humor City limits. “I kept imagining the look on your face when you’d realize I’d let you down. Had to push it away all the time, and it was damn insistent.”

“Marie, stop it.” An admiral, calling me Marie. I grit my teeth again. I even manage to hold on to the bitterness when my wife’s hand cradles my cheek and bids me look into her eyes. “You did not let me down. You did not fail. You did a damn fine job out there.”

“I did not! You were shot! You almost lost your eyesight! You-” she tries to stop me with her finger again, but I flinch away from it as if it were glowing hot instead of cool. “You-” then my eyes fall to her hand and I flinch even harder, and thrust a searching hand into my pocket. Find- “who are you, and where’s my wife?” My thoughts race. How – what – where? How?? She looks hurt, then looks at her hand, herself, sees the wedding ring and – I can see _her_ thoughts race, now, and I’m sure what I’ll hear next is a lie.

“ch’Vlossen gave it to me. Took it from the impostor, he said.” 

I hop off the bed and put it between her and me, shaking my head slowly. “No, he didn’t. That wasn’t a real ring, and even if it had been, you wouldn’t be wearing it. What’s going on here?” I catch one of my rioting theories and give it a try. “Computer, end program.” Nothing. She – whoever she is – has almost rounded the biobed by now, holding out her hands in an appeasing gesture. 

“Marie, it’s alright. You sensed me just then, didn’t you? It’s me, Marie. Trust me.” 

But how can I, when that ring is shining on her finger, the ring I still have in my goddamn pocket? I’m stuck, I realize, stuck behind this biobed – she’s quicker than me, she’d be on me in an instant no matter which side of the bed I choose to run to. “How did you do it? You’re a telepath, aren’t you? You made me think I…” Then something else occurs to me and I tap my combadge – only to encounter fabric where it should be. I feel laughter bubbling up inside me – I feel quite mad, to tell the truth. Then again, if I’m dealing with a telepath, mad is a good thing, isn’t it? Or maybe she’s making me feel that way?

This is a spiral. A circle with no way out, only further in. I clench my fingers around the ring in my pocket until it hurts. She lunges forwards suddenly, I feint to the right and move to the left, but she’s on me before I can get out behind the privacy screen, and sickbay fades into blackness when a hypo presses into my neck.

~~~

When my eyes flutter open again, the first thing they see is an unfamiliar sickbay. Starfleet, there’s enough evidence of that, but unfamiliar, right down to a doctor I can’t place and-

“Crewman Vey,” Captain Shelby acknowledges my awakening. “Good to see you conscious.”

“What’s going on? What’s happened?”

I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but her eyes sadden. They warm a bit, doing that. You could almost call them soft. “We arrived too late to pull you all out. Our transporters couldn’t get a lock on everyone, so we scanned for combadge signals and…”

“…and Kathryn didn’t have her combadge,” I whisper, remembering. “Don’t tell me she…” I can’t say the word. My fingers dive into my pocket again, touch smooth roundness. 

“I’m sorry, Crewman.”

I need to find a way to keep the blackness at bay. “Where am I, and how did I come to be here?”

“You’re on the _USS Fredrickson_ , in sickbay. This is Doctor Amali, the CMO.” A Bolian woman nods her hairless head in my direction. I don’t spare her a glance. I can’t. “You’ve been unconscious for a couple of hours.”

“Why am I not on _Voyager?”_

Shelby’s gaze is almost hesitant. “ _Voyager_ was too close to the holo-ship when it blew up. It was too heavily damaged for us to tow, so we destroyed it.”

“What?!”

“Crewman, you realize that there was a conspiracy afoot to gain hold of _Voyager_ and its technology?” The opportunity to revert to her usual cold tones seems to bolster her composure. I can only grit my teeth and ball my fists. God, what wouldn’t I give to be able to… _pull yourself together, Vey._ “We couldn’t allow that to happen.”

“Of course not.” At least I can match her for coldness. “How many casualties, and who?”

“I’m not in the habit of reporting to crewmen,” she says abruptly, turning and nodding to the doctor. “You will be debriefed shortly.”

“Why come here in the first place, then?” I spit at her retreating back.

She turns on her heels, regarding me with a calm, almost pitying gaze that’s, somehow, harder to bear than any of her former expressions. “Crewman, whatever your impression of me might be, I’m still a Starfleet captain, and you’re the widow of a Starfleet admiral.” My fists itch to punch her, and then she draws to attention and I almost give in. “My condolences on your loss.”

I look down at my hands while she waits for me to acknowledge her, wait until I see her slight shrug at the edge of my vision, wait until the doors close behind her. Shoot an inherited (I sob dryly at the thought) glare at the blue-skinned doctor when she tries to step closer, look at my hands again. There’s a faint line where my wedding ring used to be, visible even this late in winter. Kathryn’s ring won’t fit over my ring finger, of course, but it does fit on the smallest finger of my left. Then I ball my fists again until I can feel it pressing into my flesh. It doesn’t cut, not really, but figuratively – I shake my head. This feeling of a ring on the wrong finger is disconcerting, and a detached part of me knows I’ll get used to it, and that’s why I keep balling my fists, to remind me, with that pressure, that wrongness, that this is something I have to get through. 

The thought of our unborn daughter, dead as well, brings forth another stretch of fists and teeth clenching.

I have no idea how long I’ve sat like this when one of the nurses finally approaches me. “Ma’am, do you need anything? Do you want something to drink, or eat? Do you want to dress in your clothes again? They’re over here, see?”

She points, I look, and the yellow turtleneck, neatly folded, still wearing spark marks, silently sitting atop the black and grey jacket and pants, shuts me down again.

I eat, finally, mechanically. B’Elanna and Tom come by and hug me, and I return it much the same way. I let myself be led towards guest quarters, answer appropriately to the nurse’s prompts and requests, and turn off the lights as soon as she’s gone. First tears fall when I move in the dark and bump against the foot of the bed that shouldn’t be there but next door. When I think of how I used to respond to Kathryn’s teasing about my bad hand-eye coordination with the claim that I could see much better in the dark than she could. 

I refuse to see Commander Troi. I refuse to wear that uniform, I refuse to see myself as a crewman to be ordered around. I refuse, in no uncertain terms, to be ordered to speak to someone, anyone. I refuse to see the doctor – I’m not ill, after all. Just going through grief. I know that. I know I won’t die of this, much as I wish to. I’m almost through the first day when I hear seagulls and wonder if I’m going mad. 

Althea looks at me silently when I open the door to my quarters, and I wonder how long she’s stood there. I step aside after a while, and, just as silently, she passes by me. She doesn’t need light to see by, either, certainly not more illumination than the stars gliding by outside the viewport give. 

She turns from them to me and shakes her head slowly. A shudder runs through the ship, and suddenly, the stars don’t move any longer, and the hum of engines is gone. Althea gives me a delighted, brilliant smile, and nods encouragingly, even though I don’t have the slightest idea what she wants me to do. And I can’t ask her, because the door chime rings, and she slips out just as Shelby storms in. 

“What did you do?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What did you do to this ship? The energy surge came from your quarters!” 

I open my mouth to point out that a powerful non-corporeal being has just left my quarters when I see, through the still-open door, not a ship’s corridor but a plain one, and an open door beyond that. And I hear seagulls through it, I’m sure. And then I remember where I last heard seagulls, and smile. It throws Shelby off-balance, that smile, just long enough to run past her and through that open door, into a night and knee-high grass, silvery under a half-moon. Gulls wheel around me, their cries much louder than Shelby’s, much louder than they have any right to be, and wondering about them makes me not pay attention to where I’m running to, until the ground is suddenly gone. 

I think of old cartoons and crow a mad laugh, plunging into darkness amidst seagulls’ cries.

~~~

Waking up is getting old. Waking up in _Voyager’s_ sickbay confuses me, though. Seeing Kathryn at my side… I crush her to me, and it takes a while to register that-

“You’re not pregnant anymore.” _What the…_ I grab her shoulders to look into her face. Her expression makes my blood run cold. 

“Marie, I don’t know how to tell you this… I…” She looks down and I follow her gaze. And fail to see a ring, on either hand, nor even lines where there should have been. I dig into my pocket frantically, not finding anything there, either. _Hands, or nothing,_ the words shoot through my head unbidden, and I’m afraid my giggle is a little wild once more. _What the hell is going on?_

“You never were. We never married.” I meant it as a joke, but the look in her eyes gains a new layer of sorrow, and my heart another coat of ice. “Don’t tell me that’s…”

“Remember when we arrived on Earth and I went to see the admirals about their orders for my ship and crew?” I nod, mutely. Of course I do. “Marie, I…” Her head drops, she runs her fingers through her hair, and when she looks up again, the corners of her mouth point sharply downwards. “I never came back from that meeting. They exchanged me… for a doppelganger, a telepathic one, as it turned out – Lethean, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard from them.” I shake my head slowly, and she dismisses the train of thought with a flick of her hand. “Anyway, these rumors, about Section 31, Marie – all true, and they acted too fast for all the plans we’d made to thwart them. They must have grabbed me in the corridors, after I left Nechayev’s office. They interrogated me for months, Marie, months!” She sounds upset, but it’s nothing, compared to how I feel. The trials, her joy at every acquittal. The reception – her mortification at seeing me dance with Captain Picard; the quiet bliss with which she’d conducted Chakotay’s and Seven’s wedding – _our_ wedding, for God’s sake, and… and our daughter, and Althea’s gift…

I feel violated. She’s still talking, but for the first time ever, I don’t hear a word she’s saying. All of this, the work of a telepathic doppelganger? All of this, a fraud? Glitter and sequins in my eyes? But how would this lead to a pregnant Admiral Janeway (a quick look – four pips. This Janeway is not an admiral, but I’m buggered if I know whether she’s my Kathryn) claiming Section 31 had abducted her ship and replaced her with a double?

“Seven and Chakotay rescued me,” she goes on after a glance to my face. “They found out what was happening and came to free me. The impostor left _Voyager_ and came after you in the aeroshuttle, in order to coerce me into giving in. We managed to find you and break you free, and… God, Marie.” Her voice almost breaks when she looks at me again, probably because of my expression. 

“So that’s what you want me to believe now, is it?” I’m amazed how cold I can sound, and even though I see how it hurts her, I can’t stop myself. “How do I know _this_ is the truth?”

“I guess I could say there are sensor logs, and witness accounts, but that wouldn’t help much, would it?” she replies, voice calm, infuriation buried somewhere behind a curtain but still audible to me. “I can only ask you to trust me, Marie. And I can’t blame you if you don’t.” 

Her voice, her eyes, her motions. Her vulnerability hidden behind the captain’s mask; her steely determination – it all rings true, and I yearn, with every fiber of my being, to fall into her arms and let the world go hang. 

I’ve never felt so lonely, in the presence of the woman I love. 

She answers every question of our past flawlessly, no matter how hard I try to keep my mind blank. Sometimes it takes her a while to remember the answer, but an answer comes every time, and every time, I feel myself relaxing a little, and resenting, even fearing it. I stop after half an hour of this, and ask to be assigned quarters. Her heart aches, and mine, too, but I can’t bear the thought of… no. Still, I almost break when she asks me whether she can come and visit, and turns around and leaves when I whisper a positive answer.

I lie awake for the longest time.

Seeing Chakotay shocks me. He’s lost weight, looks almost gaunt, and his hair is grey; fully, steely grey. Hearing that he broke up with Seven, or rather, she with him, shocks me even more. Too many differences, he tells me, and how he’d contacted her for the rescue operation and then let her go her separate way again. Then he changes topic, going into fine detail on the rescue mission, details I don’t really want to hear, but he insists. He finishes with how _Voyager’s_ currently hiding in a nebula, trying to find out whom they can trust, both aboard ship and off it.

No, I tell him, I really wouldn’t believe the amount of distrust currently on display. I know he’s baiting me, subtly pushing me towards trusting Kathryn, or being her pillar of strength again. But I can’t be; I’m far too brittle, myself. I do apologize, and his eyes tell me he understands. 

Playing with Miral soothes me, more so since both Tom and B’Elanna don’t burden me with anything above small talk and questions what I want to eat. 

Sitting in the aft lounge, looking at swirling gas expanses, soothes me. 

I actively avoid Kathryn – I can’t help myself. _Voyager_ is big enough, and I know her routines, after all. She doesn’t seek me out, either, at least not in the first three days. I only realize how much this hurt when the door opens to reveal her, one hand on the frame, the corridor’s light painting her a sharp silhouette against the darkness of my quarters. 

I never could resist her elegance. I never could resist the way her eyes express vulnerability so defiantly. 

She leaves afterwards, not having uttered a single word, and I know I couldn’t have endured her staying, either, but it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

We fall into a rhythm of this. It’s almost too easy. There are times when my thumb touches the base of my fourth finger and doesn’t expect to find a ring there. I babysit Miral, and start taking lunch in the mess hall, unfreezing a little at finding out how many of _Voyager’s_ old crew have signed on again. I run my old holo-program and sit on the jetty for a while, sleek shells behind me, water trailing on my hand, thinking of how quickly Seven took to it, how she and Ellie and- 

I stop that thought. 

I take a boat to the water and row furiously, never minding the blisters that spring up after a while, apologizing curtly to the waiting ensign when I leave. 

At night, Kathryn almost flinches at my roughness. Then her eyes flare, and she responds in kind, and not only this time. It’s me who draws first blood, though, eight days later, and it has me running to the head even though, or maybe exactly because, it’s not my own. Kathryn follows me, and holds me, and does all the right things, but then I catch her gritting her teeth and ask her to leave. It hurts when she complies without a word.

Sleep eludes me that night, and the next. It’s almost a relief when my eyes droop shut the day after that, and I hear seagulls again. Making my moves takes another day, but in the end, I am where I want to go.

“Don’t do this.” Her voice is choked and I have to steel myself, but I’m resolved. “Marie, please don’t do this.” The Doctor is at her elbow, looking grave and carrying a hypo, but the force field is up and neither of them can do a thing. “There’s another way out of this, Marie, please, I swear to you there is.” Kathryn Janeway, begging. I grit my teeth, but I can’t stop my eyes from growing wet. “Marie, please, don’t touch that button. We’re still inside that nebula, we can’t get a lock on you to beam you aboard again if you blow the hatch. Marie!” Her voice topples up the octave, a sob more than a word, when my hand moves. My heart breaks right along with hers, but I can’t, I’ve got to, I must…

“I’m sorry.” I hope my eyes tell her. If I’m right, they don’t need to, but if I’m not… “I’m sorry, Kathryn.” Her name. The first thing she ever said to me. Music, even when I’m not singing. Kathryn. A strangled, squealing cry leaves her when I touch the console and the vacuum of space claims me. 

~~~

My head shoots up from the pillow in a strangled cry, and I find myself in darkness so complete that I’m tempted to touch my eyes to reassure myself they’re open. “Computer, lights.” Nothing happens. I grope left, right, and a suspicion grows when my right finds empty space and the edge of the bed I’m lying on. It moves upwards almost by itself. 

The light of my bedside table reveals my sleeping room. I sit up in slow, robotic motions. My ears ring. My hand finds my glasses, next, and I put them on, sobbing dryly when things come into focus through them. Next thing it searches for is my smartphone. One quick motion (and an image of Kathryn, doing the same at a Starfleet-issue table) later I have learned that it is January 25th of 2012, three o’clock in the goddamn morning. 

I sit on the edge of my bed, thoughts not even running in circles, but whirling, stopping, dancing in moves half-begun and never-ending. Two quick steps bring me to my desk, where I power up both laptops, only to see the same time and date in the lower right corner. There’s no one in the living room (and why should there be), no gadgets on my table (and why should there be), no sketchbook on the coffee table (and why should there be), no clothes but my own in my wardrobe (and why should there be).

There’s a message from Ellie on my smartphone, screaming with heartache, but I can’t answer it, can’t even commiserate. Hell, I’ve seen her work her way through this, haven’t I? Last thing I knew, she dated that drummer, didn’t she? She must have. She must have. This can’t have been a dream. It mustn’t. I repeat it to myself and still I can’t help crying, moving aimlessly through my apartment until I end up on the rim of my tub, thinking about how, in four weeks of living here, Kathryn took seventeen baths where I took one in two years. My hands clench into the fabric of the shower curtain until its rings pop and I wrap myself in it. Kathryn, my Kathryn, my starship captain, my love, my Kathryn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, folks. This could be the end, or it might just go on. Tell me what you think - make your decision, post your comments, I'd love to hear from you.
> 
> Thanks for your attention and feedback, too!


End file.
